ANDREW RAFACZ is thrilled to announce Border, a solo exhibition of new works on paper and ceramics from Abdolreza Aminlari, in Gallery One. The exhibition opens Friday, April 10th and continues through Saturday, May 30th, 2026. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Border, New York-based Abdolreza Aminlari presents a new suite of sewn thread-on-paper works, as well as freestanding stoneware objects. Furthering his practice of creating elaborately layered handmade and hand painted paper and employing meticulous embroidery, the artist’s works emphasize form and vibrational color, with a dedication to a unique material approach. He explores geometric abstraction, cultural memory and the natural world, through the lens of his own lived experience.

Throughout his career, Aminlari has contemplated themes of displacement, in-betweenness, and the notion of home. These newest works continue these investigations, while referencing the artist’s own garden. Verdant greens, deep purples, and bright fuchsias abound in compositions that draw from the natural world and a palette evocative of seasonal shift and spring bloom. The exhibition’s title, while marking the literal edges of the artist’s own tended space, also speaks to the larger and timely issue of human-defined boundaries.

In the summer of 2021, Aminlari was invited by the acclaimed paper workshop Dieu Donné to create handmade paper from abaca pulp layered on top of a cotton base. He experimented with couching, which produces intentionally layered effects, resulting in dynamic compositional properties that expose color and texture, by way of thoughtful reactions to chance. Aminlari furthered his interest in papermaking while in residence at Penland School of Craft in early 2024. Embracing the material’s organic qualities, he has continued to develop a distinct approach, offsetting and manipulating layers of custom-dyed pulp. The results are sculptural and topographical, with variegated surfaces populated by contrasting colors, especially manifested at the paper’s bubbling edges.

Hand-embroidered into the paper with common sewing or deadstock 24-karat gold thread, Aminlari’s forms continue to mine the visual language of textiles and other patterned objects he experienced as a child, while also suggesting symbols for animals and plants. Resisting strict interpretation, his interstitial shapes move beyond any singular culture or context, instead emphasizing the fluid and subjective nature of personal memory and the physical world we inhabit.

Completing the exhibition, the artist includes two new stoneware objects, part of his recent concentration on ceramics, which has become integral to his ongoing investigation of form. These freestanding works incorporate compositions, colors and textures related to his threaded wall works, further emphasizing the sculptural and material concerns present throughout his practice.

At once intimate and expansive, Abdolreza’s works invite contemplation, bridging personal and collective histories, lived experience and cultural memory, and contemporary craft and social practice—ultimately erasing the borders between them.

ABDOLREZA AMINLARI (Iranian, b. 1979) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Aminlari received his BFA from the College for Creative Studies in 2002 and completed the AICAD/New York Studio residency program in 2001. He received a fellowship in paper making from the Penland School of Craft (Bakersville, NC) in 2024, was an artist-in-residence at West Elm (New York, NY) in 2022, and was invited to create an artist project with Dieu Donné (Brooklyn, NY) in 2021. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include ANDREW RAFACZ (Chicago, IL), SITUATIONS (New York, NY), O Gallery (Tehran, Iran), Longhouse Projects (New York, NY), and Taymour Grahne Gallery (New York, NY). Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (Boone, NC), BravinLee, South Street Seaport (Brooklyn, NY), Kristen Lorello Gallery (New York, NY), Marinaro Gallery (New York, NY), Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Halsey McKay Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), 839 Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Club Rhubarb (New York, NY), Van Doren Waxter, (New York, NY), Hunterdon Art Museum (Clinton, NJ), Tyler Parks Presents (Los Angeles, CA), Golestani Gallery (Düsseldorf, Germany), and Abrons Art Center (New York, NY). Recent and upcoming art fairs include EXPO Chicago, SITUATIONS (Chicago, IL), NADA Miami, SITUATIONS (Miami, FL), Armory Show, SITUATIONS (New York, NY), Art Toronto, ANDREW RAFACZ (Toronto, CA), NADA New York, ANDREW RAFACZ (New York, NY), Positions Berlin, Golestani Gallery (Berlin, DE), Intersect Aspen, ANDREW RAFACZ (Aspen, CO), Art Los Angeles Contemporary, SITUATIONS (Los Angeles, CA), Untitled Art Fair, ANDREW RAFACZ (Miami Beach, FL), and Dallas Art Fair, Longhouse Projects (Dallas, TX). His work has been written about in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, BBC Persian, The Hyde Park Herald, and Art Asia Pacific. His work is included in numerous private and public collections.