The Edwynn Houk Gallery will present "Révélation," a new series of works by Vienna-based artist Sissi Farassat, running from September 2 through October 18, 2025. The exhibition showcases Farassat's latest exploration of vintage photography through her innovative approach of selective revelation and concealment.
In "Révélation," Farassat revisits the past by working with anonymous vintage photographs often imbued with the glamour of Hollywood's golden age. She reveals only carefully selected fragments of each image, while the rest remains hidden behind precisely cut mats—a process that art historian Michel Poivert has termed "anti-collage." This technique transforms the traditional approach to found photography by working through subtraction rather than accumulation.
Poivert writes about the series: "For those familiar with Sissi Farassat's work, Révélation is above all a surprise... The desired object reveals itself only through concealment... What we don't see takes center stage. What is primarily addressed here is the off-frame as both a real and imaginary space." He explains that where collage builds through accumulation, Farassat works through subtraction, charging what remains visible with the tension of the invisible.
The artist's technique creates a powerful resistance to the totality of found photography, leaving room for ambiguity, speculation, and invention. Many of the source images are vernacular portraits of women, shaped both by the conventions of their era and by the model's own self-representation. Farassat's carefully arranged showcases disrupt these conventions, setting aside the fiction of the portrait as a whole and transforming the mystery present in each image into a distinctive feature.
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969, Sissi Farassat moved to Vienna in 1978. She approaches photography as both image and object, working with found photographs or those she creates herself. Her meticulous, manual methods of transforming prints range from complex embroidery and beading to, in her most recent works, cut overlays in unexpected shapes that draw inspiration from the visual language of vernacular photography.
Farassat's work consistently highlights the tension between what a photograph reveals and what it conceals, addressing themes of memory, desire, and the evolving role of women in visual culture. Her early portraits and self-portraits are densely encrusted with beads and sequins, with each stitch reframing the subject through progressive accumulation on the surface. In contrast, her recent "Révélation" series conceals much of the image behind mats, revealing only chosen fragments in what Poivert describes as anti-collage.
This distillation process reduces photography to its most charged elements, allowing mystery to become the image itself. What remains suggests more than it reveals, with each portrait becoming a meeting place between what we see and what we imagine. The gesture transforms the partial mystery present in every photograph into the work's defining characteristic.
Farassat's work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Her pieces are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The exhibition "Sissi Farassat: Révélation" will run from September 2 through October 18, 2025, at the Edwynn Houk Gallery, located at 693 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022. An opening reception in the presence of the artist will be held on Thursday, September 18, from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. The Edwynn Houk Gallery will also participate in the 2025 Armory Show in New York at the Javits Center from September 4-7, 2025, at booth 223.
