Asgar / Gabriel’s works depict what they call “the historization of the moment” with references to baroque and 19th century paintings. They see their protagonists as portraits of a generation following the imperative “you can be anything you want”, a generation of ideological homelessness unabashedly pursuing a new myth moving between ecstasy and nightmare.

Painting itself is the last step in their long creative process. Asgar / Gabriel begin with a photographic sketch. Each sketch consists of hundreds of compiled photographs borrowed from mass media, their private photo album and then recomposed and modified on the computer. Like a contemporary Frankenstein, each of the subjects and compositions are reconstituted time capsules and commentaries on modernity’s obsession with notions of the “ideal” calling awareness to the global patronage of this obsessively unattainable modality set forth and so pervasive in popular culture.