In the new exhibition 'Empty Vessel' and the new book “California Concrete,' Amir Zaki mines the mystery of a distinctly Californian landscape.
California’s 1976-77 drought left lawns brown, showers short and backyard pools drained dry. But it also gave rise to a new wave of skateboarding, a time when the Z-Boys from Venice and Santa Monica jumped fences and skated in those empty concrete pools, in the process creating a radical new style of vertical sport.
“People got the idea to re-create pools into all sorts of iterations,” noted photographer and former skater Amir Zaki said. “Skateboard parks were popping up all around the Southland.” Zaki was 12 when he got his first skateboard in the 1980s. Growing up in Beaumont, he’d skate on the streets and in his friend’s backyard halfpipe. Zaki eventually took up photography. For two years he photographed skate parks from San Diego to San Jose, and his upcoming exhibit at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, “Empty Vessel — Amir Zaki,” combines images of skate parks with visually parallel pictures of broken ceramic objects."Concrete Vessel 130" by Amir Zaki.
“Through the intentional absence of skaters and the brokenness of the ceramics, together these empty vessels are pictured as sculptural rather than functional,” said Tyler Stallings, director at the college’s Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion. “They become a more spiritual aspect, a concrete landscape scooped out of the earth.”“My previous body of work focused on monumental architecture,” Zaki said. “I always had a love of concrete so it became a natural fit for me.
Book signing and artist-led exhibition tour 2-3 p.m. and reception 3-5 p.m. Saturday. Regular gallery hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, noon-4 p.m. first Saturday of every month.
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