Archive for category: Featured Artists

Born in 1970, AHWAZ, Iran

Works and lives in London, UK

EDUCATION:

Goldsmith College, London. 1997. MA Fine Art.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS:

2011 ‘Walking in the Darkness of a Promised Light’, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai, UAE

2009 Live Action 71, curated by The Diogenes Club, Late at Tate Britain, London, UK

‘Between the Eye and the Object falls a Shadow…’, B21 Gallery, Dubai, UAE

2008 Live Action 60, commissioned for Zoo Art Fair and CollectingLiveArt, London, UK

Best of Discoveries, Shcontemporary, Shanghai, China

2007 ‘You Were the Dead, Their’s Was the Future…’, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK

‘Who is the Third that Walks Beside You?’, Matthew Bown gallery, London, UK

Reza Aramesh, Watermans Centre, London, UK

‘We’ve Lost the Hearts and Minds… E: vent gallery, London, UK

2006 Live Action ‘I am a Believer’, commissioned by ICA, Trafalgar Square, London, UK

2005 Live Action, ‘The Key of Dreams’, Gasworks Gallery, London, UK

Live Action ‘Of this Men Shall Know Nothing’, Thomas Goode Shop, London, UK

2003 ‘The Eternal Spring’, Laurence O’Hana Gallery, London, UK

2002 ‘Picture This..’, Platform Gallery, London, UK

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2011 ‘Light’ (part 1), Paradise Row, London, UK

2009 ‘Relaunch’, Sunbury House, London, UK

2008 ‘Los Vinilos’, Zoo Art fair, London, UK

Event Horizon, GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK

2007 Space Invasion, an International Offspace Project, various venues, Vienna, Austria

2007 ‘Los Vinilos’, Buenos Aires, Argentina

‘The Politics of Fear’, Albion gallery, London, UK

‘Temporary Measures’, Associate Gallery, London, UK

2006 ‘Making a Scene’, curated by Tal Yahas Haifa Museum of Art, Israel

‘Metropolis Rise: New Art from London’, CQL Design Centre, Shanghai and 798 Art District, Beijing, China

Culture Bound, East Wing Collection VII, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, London, UK

2005 ‘Defense’, University of California, Sweeney Art Gallery, USA

Contemporary Drawings, curated by Synthesis, Athens, Greece

‘We Have Met The Enemy and He is Us’, curated by Shezad Dawood, Redux Project Space, London, UK

2004 ‘So You’re Afraid of What?’, curated by Centrefold, Redux Project Space, London, UK

‘Copy-art.net’, curated by Irini Papadimitriou, ICA, London, UK

‘Gewalt’, curated by Suhall Malik, Laushy Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

Sir ® Eel: The Suit since ’68: The Politics of Revulsion, curated by Peter Lewis, Redux Project Space, London, UK

2001 ‘What if I Told the Truth?’, curated by Reza Aramesh, Cell Projects, London, UK

‘Trick Peaser’, curated by Luke Oxley, Mandarin Duck, London, UK

‘Teeth and Trousers’, curated by Richard Priestly, Cell Projects, London, UK

‘Forever Yours’, curated by Reza Aramesh, Victoria House, London, UK

‘Heart of Glass’, curated by Esther Windsor, London College of Printing, London, UK

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIP:

2007 Nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award

2006 Nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award

2006 Artsadmin Bursary

2006 Arts Council of England grant for the ‘I am a Believer’ show hosted by the ICA

2004 London Arts Research and Development grant, Arts Council

Action 97 (2010),Algerian civilians suspected of being terrorists are searched and put on trucks to be taken to the inter- rogation cells, Algiers 1956.

Born in 1970 in Ahwaz, Iran, Aramesh left his homelandwhen 16 and after completing his BA in Chemistry, changed his major and obtained his first class MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmith College, London. At first it was paintings and pieces of texts which attracted his attention, but since 2001 he is engaged in works he calls Actions. Launching shows or events which may or may not have any audience, nevertheless they remain in the form as photographs or videos where he explores his identity as a Middle Eastern man and all those clichés which can play a role in the relationship between East and West.

اکشن 42، پیروان فتح از منطقه حماس در شمال غزه به سوی کرانه باختری می‌گریزند. چاپ نقره، ژلاتین، 164 در 124.

Action 105. An Israeli soldier points his gun at a Palestinian youth asked to strip down as he stands at a military checkpoint along the “separation barrier” at the entrance of Bethlehem. March 2006.

Aramesh, the imagery of the world in turmoil and war has become a focal point for his work. He meticulously recreates details found in images that are sourced from print, television and online media, all reporting on wars and international conflicts. The artist tends to focus on an individual or group of men, and endeavours to bring their character into his photographic or sculptural pieces.
In photography Aramesh finds a medium to connect social-politics of the modern world with his interests in art history, cinematography and literature.

In making his sculptures, Aramesh uses the exacting techniques employed by 17th Century European sculptors; the application of the varnish and paint are executed in the same way as the great ecclesiastical sculptures of the 17th Century. This is essential to understanding his work. Aramesh brings a contemporary dialogue to the traditions of sculpture and the long-standing debates of conflict and faith, and thus hope. He invites the viewer to question whether the victims of war which he portrays can be considered as modern day saints not in the disparaging relationship between East and West, but in terms of the absolute human realities of suffering.

Aramesh’s photographs represent a kind of stillness associating Still Life in painting. His scenarios go on stage, in slick modern apartments, stately British mansions, and art-filled museums. from majestic apartments to aristocratic houses in order to suggest that wealth and financial interests are fundamentally intertwined with war. He says: I think war reportage is presented in such a way as to make you see the horrible at the first glance. In this way, they focus on certain elements and exaggerate. Attention is drawn to horror and you stop reading the picture further. Aramesh wants to show all the layers of reality. “Life as it is lived is what theater and media lose in their search for horror. “The expression of tragedy turns to roar. I am interested in things which are completely left out; the things which are not captured by the camera, but are around it.”

Picture this. You are walking back from work down a pedestrian suburban street, and through the window of a terraced house you glimpse a group of Middle Eastern men lounging around in armchairs, wearing balaclavas. At a time when terrorist activity saturates popular visual culture, this simple tableau contains all the ingredients of tabloid sensationalism – the unexpected and dangerous combined with the neighbourly and familiar, peppered with a pinch of xenophobia. It is with such scenarios that Iranian artist Reza Aramesh adroitly explores his identity as a Middle Eastern man, as well as the complex relationship between East and West, in his recent show ‘Picture This’ (2002). His work, though political, has quite a humourous element running through it; an element that is highly important to him as he feels that humour creates a distance with which to critique culture. It is as though he uses humour as a tool rather than merely a means of making people laugh: humour often serves as a way of breaking down awkward situations, of making people feel at ease, perhaps even when they shouldn’t.

Like the Surrealists, Aramesh uses the masquerade to question the identity behind the mask. Drawing on his own experiences of living in both Iran and the UK, the artist explores how he himself is perceived, and the various fallacies on which such perceptions are founded.

I am a believer (2005)

It’s interesting with Aramesh that as much as he wants to break down the constructs and structures of society, he avoids them. He states that he consciously avoids anything that could possibly dictate rules or impose bonds unto him, and one can see this obsessive aversion to authority in his work. He states that we can only define our identity within the very split-second that you do so, within moments that definitions changes, shifts according to your situation and beliefs. Such an attitude makes the theme of his I am a believer (2006 at Watermans) which takes the traditional Changing of the Guard ceremony and re-enacts it in Trafalgar Square. He first advertised, in various newspapers and publications, for males (of which roughly 99% were second-generation British) to perform the ceremony. In other words, by turning to the Past and glorifying traditions, and arguing that the I am a believer he is questioning the fact that identity could be fixed. He argues that this regression to the past, this citation of history as a form of psychological appeasement, is detrimental to contemporary society. Constructs, rituals, habits are what make the society and it is specifically these, which Aramesh finds so tiring, and burdensome.

Between the Eye and the Object Falls a Shadow (2008)

The series Between the Eye and the Object Falls a Shadow (2008), a name borrowed from William Burroughs is an attempt to unlearn surrounding media images. He wants to overturn our perception of tragedy and in this way remind us of the reality of atrocities. The ever present coverage of atrocities rendered in words and images can desensitize us as much as bring about a kind of indifference through the knowledge we gain from tragedy. To confront such detrimental effect, he slows down the pace of the image to draw our attention to the essential humanity lost in momentous reading. In this way he breaks down the shape of the tragedy and with that suddenly nudity becomes vulnerability. The curiosity of viewer is left intact, but it seems naïve. Once again human tragedy becomes human. In his own words: Each one of us can be an oppressor and each one of us can be a victim.” That is why the oppressive figure is completely removed from this series and the camera intentionally keeps a distance and focuses on the detained groups of men.

Walking in the darkness of a promised light (2011)

In the series called Walking in the darkness of a promised light (2011, Dubai), Aramesh puts himself centrally, amidst the swirling cross_currents of the global information flow and relentless supply and demand of media imagery from across the world. In this exhibition he presents photographs in the form of triptychs and diptychs in a Goya-like manner and five sculptures that employ traditional 17th century polychromatic, marquetry and wood-carving techniques. Their themes is the continuation of the previous series of conflict, war, martyrdom, sacrifice and most of all and more tangible, human suffering.

In his last show Them Who Dwell On Earth (2011, One Marylebone), the inaugural exhibition by Mottahedan Projects dedicated to developing, nurturing and creating platffoorms for emerging artists of our time, Aramesh displays seven sculptures and six photographs as his first solo exhibition in London.

یکی از پیکره‌های نمایشگاه ساکنین زمین 2011

در آخرین کارهایش، ساکنین زمین (2011، وان مریلبون) که یکی از پروژه‌های متحدان برای رشد خوراک‌رساندن و آفریدن سکوهایی برای هنرمندان در حال پیدایش روزگار ما از سوی محمد متحدان است، آرام هفت پیکره و شش عکس را در این نخستین نمایشگاه انفردی خود در لندن به نمایش می‌گذارد. پیکره‌ها از سبک تمثالهای کاتولیک پیروی می کنندف اما در اینجا به صورت رنج آدمی به نمایش گذاشته می‌شوند و بیشتر انگار دادخواهی می‌کنند تا گذشت الهی را به نمایش بگذارند. سپس با عکسها زمینه بیشتری به آنها داده می‌شود، نگاره‌هایی عظیم و سیاه و سفید که نگاه خیره موضوع تنوعی از داوری یا بدفهمی را به نمایش می‌گذارد و احساس کلی ابهامی ژرف را. پیکره‌هایش برانگیزاننده، پرشورند و رویارویی نزدیک با افرادی که نقش قربانی را بازی می‌کنندف عواطف خود را برای ژرف‌اندیشی و مهر و شفقت به دنیا پیشکش می‌کنند.
امید است تلاشهای رضا آرامش در مقام هنرمندی ایرانی انگلیسی، همراه با دیگر هنرمندانی که دغدغه‌های او را دارند، درک گسترده‌تری میان باختر و خاور از راه رسانه‌ی کارساز و تأثیرگذار هنر به وجود آورد.

اکشن 58، دنیای بدون مرز

منابع:

کاتالوگ نمایشگاه‌ها و بازبینی‌های نمایشگاه‌هایش از جمله در مجله فریز

Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Karen Marta. Text by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin, Eleanor Sims. Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Published by Damiani

Monir Farmanfarmaian is one of those Iranian women of our time who brings to mind Ferdosi’s great epic Shahnameh and the verse: “That’s the way their women are, the Iranians.”

Born in 1923 in the city of Qazvin, and in one of those old and now nostalgic Persian house-gardens with rooms covered with gorgeous Persian carpets, and colored windows opening to orchards full of nightingales. During the WWII, she audaciously left the occupied Iran, because she had made up her mind to go to Paris to become an artist. The French consulate informed her that moving to occupied Paris was, unfortunately, impossible; as was her alternative plan of waiting out the war in Morocco, which was still under German attack. But Monir was undeterred: she resolved to move to America, and from there to Paris once peace was declared. She secured a place on an American battleship bound from Mumbai to California; from there, she travelled east to New York, arriving in 1945. She never made it to Paris, but she did become an artist.

Instead of Paris, she returned to Iran, entered Tehran University to study art (1944-46), went back to New York to further her studies at Parsons School of Design (1946-49) and Cornell University (1948-51) where she becomes close to many of the emerging contemporary artists of 1950s, like Louise Nevelson, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and, later, Frank Stella, Willem de Konning and…, thus becoming a component product of Zeitgeist. She began her art career as a fashion illustrator for the department store Bonwit Teller, where “Andy would do the drawings and she would do the layouts.” The musician John Cage describes her as the “young beautiful Persian girl” while Monir describes Warhol as an ‘incredibly shy illustrator’ from whom she bought several sketches of shoes and in exchange gave him a small Mirror ball which he always kept on his desk. It is through her friendship with these people that her lifelong interest in modernism is instilled in her – the influence of which sits fascinatingly in her art. “It was amazing to know all these people,” she says. “I loved it. Even though I was just painting flowers and designing fashion, I loved these modern things.”

After a decade of life and studies in New York, she returned to Iran in 1957 which was a return to her rich Iranian inheritance. One day when taking some visiting western friends to Shah Cheraq’s Shrine in Shiraz, she sits in a corner for half an hour dumfounded by its unique majestic interior mirror work, crying like an innocent child by watching the reflection of people’s images – the faithful and beggars – in those tiny pieces of mirrors. This is how her lifelong experimentation with adapting and combining age old techniques of reverse-glass painting, mirror mosaics and Iranian Islamic designs with a modern abstract expressionism and minimalism begins.

Farmanfarmaian’s art has encompassed many forms, from simple paintings of flowers and birds to unsettling “memory box” installations reminiscent of the oeuvre of Louise Bourgeois. But her largest, and most compelling, body of work combines two techniques from traditional Iranian design: mirror mosaic, and reverse glass painting, both having a flourishing existence in Iran before the advent of Islam (with Mirror Hall of Persepolis and the documentary Iran, Seven Faces of Civilization, as evidences)[1] and continuing to evolve as other art fields after Islam now not only in Royal Castles, but also Holy Shrines. These works are often large in scale and exquisitely beautiful, each sliver of glass catching and refracting the light like the teeming images inside a giant kaleidoscope, celebrating a culture which their creator adores.

Her distinctive aesthetic, thus rooted in a strong passion for her Iranian heritage was developed in the late 1960s and 1970s, with a knapsack of modern art she had brought home from US. It is during this period when Monir Farmanfarmain seriously begins to study the arts, crafts, customs and rituals of nomadic tribes in the Middle Eastern region, and toured ancient cities where she was impressed by their architectural forms and intricate ornamentation. Her work illustrates a commitment to these traditional Persian Oriental techniques and patterns, combining mirror mosaics, geometric patterns and reverse-glass paintings to create works that resonate both with traditional forms and a more modernist aesthetic.

Her reputation peaked in the 1970s, with major exhibitions in Tehran, Paris and New York. Hans Ulrich Obrist, the distinguished contemporary art director, curator, art critic and author becomes determined to see Farmanfarmain because during his trips to Cairo and Emirates at that time whenever he asked young artists: Who is your hero of the last generation? They always answered “Monir.” Obrist’s continued dialogue and friendship with Monir thereby becomes the basis of a monograph he edited about Monir (see above) and also his invitation to her to participate in his project Maps for 21st Century (2010) a series of lectures and discussions with the simple guideline: how artists perceive a map of 21st Century.[2]

Although Monir was brought up in affluence inherited from her grandfather (a merchant along the Silk Road), yet losing two sisters (one due to tuberculosis and the other to appendicitis), initiated her into pain and suffering quite early in life. After the Islamic Revolution of 1978, with the confiscation of her home and her art (some sold and others destroyed), she was forced to flee and take refugee in New York working on commissions, drawings, collages and models.

If in Iran her gender was her main hindrance as an artist (traditional craftsmen found it hard to take orders from a woman), in US it is her nationality which hinders her. In her own words: “After the revolution and the Gulf war, nobody wished to have anything to do with Iran and Iranians. None of the art galleries were willing to even talk to me. And after September 11 – my God. No way. Rather than being a woman, it was difficult just being Iranian.”

After her return to Iran in 2000, she was encouraged to recreate some of her lost works. Reluctant to copy herself, she began warming herself with abstract painting, dropping color on glass and mixing it with mirror work to rediscover the patterns she had begun in 60s when she first immersed herself in this old traditional Iranian branch of art. And like phoenix resurrecting from its own ashes, she was reborn from the kaleidoscopes of her own making.

Monir Farmanfarmain is the first contemporary artist using traditional mirror mosaic and reverse glass techniques in her art. Her formula, using wooden and plaster ‘canvases’ allows the pieces to be movable, while traditionally they would have been fixed to the wall. When still young, whenever her father designed Persian carpets at home, Monir would sit beside him, stitching embroidery or drawing and painting flowers. She was still mainly painting flowers when for the first time she decided to use the reverse glass method, which is building up a picture in reverse on the back of glass. When she first tried to add mirrors to the work, she found that the oil paintings of flowers reacted badly with the adhesive she was using, thus she had to drop painting altogether. Now Monir has perfected her technique using different adhesive and glass that cuts to any size, shape and color in her works.

The mirror mosaics reflect many fragments of the world around them, assembling a constructed identity, a life composed of memories, individually disjointed, but beautiful in their overall effect, held in balance by the act of composition. Monir’s compositions, while externally bound and limited, open inwardly to the infinite, underlining the timeless and infinite quality of geometric concepts.

The traditional mirror mosaic designs revolve around geometrical shapes, notably the hexagon, rooted in ancient astronomical science. In her youth when Monir was first drawn to mirror work, she hired a math tutor to teach her the algebra and geometry she needed to construct these intricate and precise pieces. Curator Rose Issa, who also is an old friend of Monir highlights “Monir explores the different interpretations and variations of the flexibility of design that geometry allows.”

In this new period of her artistic creation, she not only continues to explore the variable arrangement of geometric figures, but also to emphasize on the physical movement of the shapes.

After years of absence from the scene of exhibitions, she held her first solo show in 2006 at Niavaran Artistic Creation Center, Tehran. The following year Monir Farmanfarmaian’s Mirror Mosaics were exhibited at Victoria and Albert Museum (2007). With Hejleh (2007), a mobile shrine used traditionally up in Iran to commemorate someone who has died, one comes to believe that her rebirth now consolidates, as going beyond and transcending the past is an integral part of any re-birth. She makes it in memory of her beloved husband, other family members, poets and other individuals she admired, which sounds like a homage to her personal and national past, the final stage of a metamorphosis, the butterfly is now ready to emerge out of the pupa of her transforming years of exile. No wonder that her next series conveyed the kind of air to be called the Geometry of Hope.

Farmanfarmaian with her work Hejleh

Geometry of Hope curated Rose Issa was held at Leighton House Museum, London in 2008. “I chose to use ‘Hope’ in the title of the exhibition,” explains Rose, “because I am always so happy in Monir’s studio.” The title pays homage to the beauty of Monir’s work, and refers to Sufi poetry where mirrors reflect life, light and hope.

Continuing on the path of surpassing the past, memories are poured out and Recollections (1 & 2) come to life.

Recollection 1, (Third Line Gallery, Dubai 2008), the reverse glass painting fragments that she incorporates among the mirror mosaics are details of flowers. Pen and ink drawings of flowers have been a constant practice throughout Monir’s life and she once spent many happy years creating a beautiful garden out of the bare earth around her (now confiscated) home in Tehran. It is as though with this series she reviews the geometric patterns of her own inner personal circle of life and deals with the outer social circle in Recollection 2.

Like many of her compatriots of her age and the generation after, Monir’s has witnessed the rise and fall of different political regimes in Iran. The Qajar painting fragments in Reflection 2, the dynasty whose fall coincided with Monir’s first birthday (1925) is like marking ‘ the end of a beginning’ and can symbolize the whole social historical past.

Her name appears on the shortlist for Jameel Prize 2011 at Victoria and Albert Museum, London. “I am old, but my mind is much younger. I never took myself seriously. I had no hope that I would be one of [the nominees for the Jameel prize], out of so many artists. But,” she adds with a mischievous cackle, “maybe I do deserve to win it, when I am 87 years old.”

Monir has a command of a visual vocabulary that many would envy. She relies on instinct and intuition rather than theory, and her recent work is the result of a lifetime’s learning and experience. Her pieces are mystical in the play of light and colour from the mirror’s reflection and striking in their mathematical precision, and slick reflective surfaces. They come in a large scale and different shapes, some as a series and incorporate hundreds of tiny geometrical mirrors and reverse glass paintings, some only 1mm thick, carefully cut and positioned to fit. The details never cease to be alluring from 10 metres to 10 centimetres.

In her Bisections of a Circle Series recently shown at the 29th São Paolo Bienale in Brazil (2009), each work is embedded within a circle of 100 cm diameter; however in joining two overlapping circles Farmanfarmaian also references the mathematical concept of the Venn Diagram, which is used to define relationships between two or more concepts containing the possible iterations and intersections of elements. In this manner the geometric forms that are described within the circle – each articulated by a set number of points that touch the outer diameter- are also examples of the infinite possibilities of these works.

“So far as I am aware, no other artist has made works in five or six pieces that can be arranged in different ways as a collection. For two or three of them, I came up with the designs myself, then went to work on the framing. But most are taken from the geometric designs of old Islamic architecture.

Group 4, Version 4, 2010 – Mirror mosaic, reverses glass painting -100 cm x 100 cm (estimate”

“I take one classic piece of architecture and then design around it with strips or squares, half-circles, hexagons or octagons.

“The first ones were quite simple, and then I begin making them more complex. Then I went in the other direction, simplifying them down as far as I could go.”

Monir, explains that there is no ‘arty’ inspiration for her work, simply a love of geometrical beauty; she draws out a plan for each work and from this, she works with craftsmen (with master Mohammad Navid as her first instructor) to build the final piece. Monir has a lot of input in the construction of each piece which usually changes from the original drawing. “The men who work for me are very good at what they do, but when it comes to being creative, they cannot do it, they are just craftsmen.” To construct her three dimensional panels, Farmanfarmaian employs them to draft her initial designs. Mirrors are then cut to fit the required shape and placed in geometrical patterns and mixed with plaster to produce new compositions which allow the artist to use colored glass too. The resulting works are complex geometrical patterns which refer to a wide range of influences in traditional art, architecture to sciences.

Farmanfarmaian’s work juxtaposes tradition and avant-garde to create colorful and geometric motifs: circles, squares and polygons are skillfully cast within the rigorous mould of classical geometrical design. Aware of her interest in Islamic geometrical patterns, the Queensland Art Gallery commissioned Patterns of infinity also called Lightning for Neda in 2009 for APT6, presented first by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. It is a computer touchscreen interactive in which participants can create colorful geometric designs. Children are invited to discover the complexity and beauty of geometric patterns and see how Monir’s installations and mirror mosaics drew inspiration from these time-honored design principles. The artist dedicated this work to the loving memory of her late husband, Dr. Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.[3]

In this monumental work, the six sides of the hexagon provide an underlying structure and are expanded and elaborated on as a repeated motif. Additionally, the hexagon represents the six directions of motion (up, down, front, back, right, left) and the six virtues (generosity, self-discipline, patience, determination, insight, compassion). In each of the panels of Lightning for Neda, Farmanfarmaian has used over 4000 mirror shards to create myriad patterns across a sublime, glittering surface.

This is how much she has advanced as a product of Zeitgeist, to fill up the generation gap and bring shrines and hejlehs not only to museums, but on computer screens.

Flight of the Dolphin , (recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is a geometric and reflective kaleidoscope with shard-like forms of color and light slicing through fragments of mirror, showing her ongoing endeavor to emphasize physical movement on a two dimensional surface.

With the detailed intricacies of the cut mirror and her acute sense of modern aesthetics, Farmanfarmaian creates three-dimensional sculptures that challenge the basis of contemporary compositions. In her new work duplicating the selected figure either side by side, or facing each other, yet always connected, Farmanfarmaian creates a series of geometrical formations resulting in a number of kaleidoscopic variations. The negative space created within these formations further manifests other geometric shapes thus creating yet another layer to the work through careful and precise placement. Putting it in her own words: “The negative shapes are very important, so that the combinations can create, say, a four-pointed star in the space inside pentagons.”

Over the past forty years, Farmanfarmaian has explored, reintroduced and restructured the use of mirror mosaics, reverse glass painting and Islamic geometry creating her individualized technique. Inspired by the symbolism of numbers in Islam, where the belief is that at the core of any geometrical expression is the line and single figure based on the Divine Order of nature laws. This has led her to explore the notion of repetition, pattern and form creating elaborate combinations of shapes, color and line. In her latest series, aptly titled the Convertibles, her ornate works elevate this interplay to another level, creating formations that physically can be arranged in multiple variations.

There is no doubt that the evolution of Monir’s powerful and original vision will radiate for years to come, and leave its impact on subsequent generations of artists.

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Born in Tehran in 1937, Ali Akbar Sadeghi entered the college of fine arts of ‌Tehran University in 1958. While still at high school, he studied watercolor painting with Avak Hyrapetian. Later in 1959, Sadeghi created a characteristically Iranian style of stained glass art. During his college years he engaged in such various fields as poster painting, advertisement graphics, packaging and book cover designs.

Upon graduation, Sadeghi produced a few animations for the center of intellectual development of children and young adults and illustrated a few books for the same institute. He soon became quite distinguished in the field of animation, book illustration, watercolor, and oil painting. His animations include: The Seven Cities (1971, 18 minutes), Flower Storm (1972, 9 minutes), Boasting (1973, 11 minutes), Coalition (1973, 12 minutes), The Rook (1974, 10 minutes), Malek Khorshid (1975, 22 minutes), and Zal and Simorgh the Bird (1977, 25 minutes) with cooperation of Alireza Kavian-Ra’d.

Teaching art students in Oman, teaching animation in the University of Decorative Arts, teaching book illustration at the College of Fine Arts of Tehran University, supervising more than 20 students studying animation and illustration at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, honorary member of Society of Iranian Painters, a member of the Society of Children Books Illustration, commemorated as the distinguished Iranian children books illustrator in 2006, also as a pioneer animation director and the first Iranian director in folklore animation films and..

Awards:

1978 Grand Prix, Noma Concours, for Children’s Picture Book Illustrationfor “Contemplation is the Best Worship”, “Hero of Heroes” and “Voyages of Sindbad, the Sailor”
1980 Grand Prix, Best Designed Books from All Over the World, Leipzig, for “Contemplation is the Best Worship”
1985 Grand Prix, First Biennale of Iran Graphic Design Exhibition for Book Illustration
1989 Honorable Mention, Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, for “Victory
Awards for Flower Storm:

1972 Gold medal from Tehran 7th international film festival of children and young adults
1973 Honorable Mention, Tampere International Short Film Festival, Finland
1974 The Soviet Painters Association Award
1974 The Grand Prix of Lebanon Educational Film Festival
1975 Bronze Medal, Columbus Film Festival
1975 Bronze Medal, Columbus Film Festival for the idea and motif in production of Flower Storm
1975 Honorable Mention, International Animation Film Festival, New York
1975 Bronze Medal, International Animation Film Festival, New York
Awards for Boasting:
1974 C.I.D.A.L.C, Gandhi Peace Prize at 24th international Filmfestpiele Berlin
1974 Bronze Medal, C.I.D.A.L.C. Annual International Committee, Paris
1974 Honorary Diploma for the best short film, Tehran International Festival of Films for Children and, Young Adults
1974 Honorary Diploma, Krakow 12th International Film Festival
1975 Bronze Medal, Krakow 12th International Film Festival
1975 Gold Medal, Virgin Islands International Film Festival
1975 Silver Medal, Chicago International Film Festival
1975 Honorable Mention, Los Angeles International Festival of Children’s Film
1975 Honorable Mention, New York 4th International Film Festival
1975 Honorable Mention, San Francisco 4th International Festival of Children’s Films
Awards for The Rook:
1974 Honorary Diploma for the best short film, Tehran 9th International Festival of Art Film for children and young adults
1974 Honorary Diploma, Krakow 12th International Film Festival
1974 Bronze Medal, Krakow 12th International Film Festival
1975 Gold Medal, Virgin Islands International Film Festival
It is noteworthy that 38 countries participation in this festival and there were 2000 film entries.
1975 Silver Medal, Chicago 11th International Film Festival
1975 Honorable Mention, Los Angles International Animation Film Festival
Honorable Mention, San Francisco 4th International Festival of Children’s films
1975 “Rook” was selected as an outstanding film of the year for presentation at London Film Festival
Awards for Malek Khorshid:
1977 Honorary Diploma, the Festival International de court Metrage pour la Jeunesse – Paris
Books Illustrated:
The Hero of Heroes (1970, also published in Japanese in Japan)
Abdolrazzaq the Hero (1972)
Gordafarid (1973)
Contemplation is the best worship: Aphorisms of the Prophet Mohammad (1974)
The Bronzesmiths (1974)
The Rain, The Sun , and The Story of Tiles (1974)
Be the Child of Your Times: Aphorisms of Imam Ali (1975)
Let us play Chess (1975)
The Prophets’ Mother (1975)
The Voyages of Sindbad The Sailor (1976)
They Are Alive, The Life of Zeinab, Imam Ali’s Daughter (1977)
Shine, Lady Sun! (1977)
Let Us Live Together (1977)
A Visit to the Province of Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari (1977)
Keep Your Spirit Alborz: The Mystical Sayings of Khajeh Abdollah Ansari (1978)
Victory (1985)
The Chapter Entitled Chaharshanbeh Suri: An Iranian Traditional Ceremony” in Asian Games (Published in English in Japan), and the film posters forThe Rook, Boasting, and Malek Khorshid.

Awards for Book Illustrations:

1978 Grand Prix, Noma Concours, for Children’s Picture Book Illustration for “Contemplation is the Best Worship”, “Hero of Heroes” and “Voyages of Sindbad, the Sailor”
1980 Grand Prix, Best Designed Books from All Over the World, Leipzig, for “Contemplation is the Best Worship”
1985 Grand Prix, First Biennale of Iran Graphic Design Exhibition for Book Illustration
1989 Honorable Mention, Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, for Victory
In 1977 Sadeghi stopped making films altogether and devoted himself entirely to painting in the style of Surrealism, also resumed watercolor painting after many years. He says in this regard: When I feel relieved of tensions and constraints which drive me to surrealist painting, and at times of mental serenity and peace I turn to watercolor paintings.

In 1989 Sadeghi added an exhibition room to his studio called Sabz Art Gallery, in order to offer a space for contemporary Iranian artists to show their works.

Exhibitions:

Commemoration of Parviz Fanizadeh, Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran
Commemoration of Asghar Mohammadi, Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran
1988 Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran
1988 La Chaux-de-Fonds Art Gallery, Switzerland
1989 Iranian Watercolor Painters, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran
1989 Watercolor Paintings Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran
1989 Opening of Sabz Gallery
1990 Commemoration of Firooz Shirvanlu, Noqreh Publishing, Tehran
1990 Commemoration of Firooz Shirvanlu, Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran
1990 For the Victims of the Earthquake, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran
1991 Painting & Miniatures, Exports Development Center, Tehran
1991 Watercolors, Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran (solo),
1992 Watercolors, Iran the Land of Love, Part 1, Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran
1992 Watercolors, Iran the Land of Love, Part 2, Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran
1992 Sketches of oil paintings, Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran
1992 Watercolors, Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran (solo)
1993 Painting & Miniatures, Export Development Organization of Iran
1992 Images of Iran’s Contemporary Arts, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran
1992 Painting exhibition in support of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran
1993 Painting Biennial, Tehran
1993 “Watercolor exhibition, Iran the Land of Love,” Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran,
1995 Painting Biennial, Tehran
1996 “Watercolor exhibition, Kerman, Memorial of Presence,” Sabz Art Gallery, Tehran (solo),
1996 “Watercolor and oil painting exhibition in Salau Palace,” Bern, Switzerland,
2001 Painting exhibition, Los Angeles
2003 Watercolor exhibition, Los Angeles
2008 Painting Exhibition, Dubai
2011 Painting Exhibition, Aran Gallery, Tehran
Sadeqi has participated in more than 70 group exhibitions inside and outside the country

Publications:
Whispers, Ali Akbar Sadeghi’s Watercolors, Negar Publication
Iran, The Land of Love, Sadeghi’s Watercolor Paintings, Gooya Publishing
Alphabet, A Philosophical Analysis of 50 Works of A.Sadeghi, by Nader Ebrahimi, Farhangan Publication
Memories, Watercolors Album No. 1, Gooya Publishing
Memories, Watercolors Album No. 2, Gooya Publishing
Memories, Watercolors Album No. 3, Gooya Publishing
Kerman, Memorial of Presence, Watercolors, 1997, Kerman Studies Center
Membership of Juries:
1974 Painting Exhibition of Tamasha Magazine for children and teenagers
1975 Iran’s Representative in the Week of Animation Film Makers, Zagreb, Yugoslavia
1976 Iran’s Representative in the Seminar of Animations Film Makers, Alma Ata, Kazakhstan
1989 The First Exhibition of Illustrators of children’s book, Tehran
1991 The Seventh International Festival of Film for children and teenagers, Tehran
1991 Honorary Diploma from the First Painting Biennial, Tehran
1992 The First Exhibition of Flowers and Nature in the works of Iranian painters, Tehran
1993 Member of Selection Board, Painting Biennial, Tehran
1995 Member of Selection Board, Painting Biennial, Tehran
1996 International Festival of Paris Children’s Film, Aubervilliers
Tributes

1991 Tribute at the 25th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Institute for The Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults for his outstanding artistic achievements in the field of book illustration and film making, his participation as a jury member in more than 40 TV animation festivals, one minute films and cinema animation festivals, participation as a jury and selecting member for native and international book festivals, participation as a jury member in tens native biennials, honorary guest at Iranian short films festival in Washington and production of more than 15 reliefs for Saderat Bank and so on. He has been commemorated in more than 70 film and book festivals

1996 Golden key of the Aubervilliers, at International Festival of Paris Children’s Films, Aubervilliers
2000 Commemoration for illustration of religious books
2006 Commemoration on the international day of animation
2008 Selected as an everlasting figure
2008 Commemoration at Art Academia
2010 Commemoration at animation festival, South Korea

The following is an extract from: Alikabar Sadeghi, Selected works (1977-1997), Iranian Art Publishing, 1992, Tehran

Turning Toward New Horizons
Javad Mojabi

Since the beginning of modern painting movement in Iran, going back to forties (Iranian twenties), the major academic advices, that is taking advantage of tradition has had a tremendous impact on the main Iranian painting genres for subsequent decades. The question however is: How can cultural inheritance be utilized, remain Iranian and at the same time accomplish an international esteem?

Undoubtedly, innovation in any domain revolves around the existing tradition, but not in a convergent direction, like a spring that spirals toward its center and, by enveloping the shell of tradition and apparently repeating it, is reduced into a more compressed state. The innovator begins with tradition, realizing its real dimensions, he/she goes beyond it and with a divergent turn from its center opens up to other horizons. In this way by utilizing the overall human accomplishment, he/she finds a dynamic share in the development of native art and adds to the universal art treasury.

In his particular interpretation of tradition, Sadeghi first deals with the characteristic Iranian world, and subsequently with the roots of human universe. In contemplating upon these worlds, he sometimes makes time and space to fade away in his works, invoking the entire humanity to an infinite world, to an eternity in which the world is observed at the stage when apple, tree, horse and the first human beings were created, as though, after centuries of efforts, human beings have already reached its apocalypse.

The Planet of Imagination

If we accept the premise that art is the interaction between imagination and reality, in the sense that the artist’s imagination draws vigor from the outer reality and affects it in return, with art being born out of this continual exchange, then this interpretation fits Sadeghi better than any other painter, because he has made real use of imagination in his works. This imagination is not of the fantastic, unbridled or sickly nightmarish type. Rather, in the language of Iranian sage artists, it is a kind of attitude, a worldly outlook of existence. Our past artists and men of letters believed that the imaginary world can provide an interpretation of existence superior to that resulting from the means of experience or reason.

Sadeghi has built an imaginary planet with a strange geography, chimerical peoples, a real history and surreal adventures. His colorful imaginary planet bears similarities to our world. At times its link with it is filial. At others it is so remote that identifying it with the mother planet becomes difficult.

The planet of Sadeghi’s paintings is made, not out of reality, but of the substance of imagination. His active imagination transforms the surrounding realities into the form and color of an imaginary space; although the boundary between reality and fantasy has long become so blurred that separating them seems so naïve and credulous.

He begins his work with the pictorial heritage of his own culture that is Iranian painting, which is the outcome of his ancestors’ imagination in the face of the real world. Past Asian painters, particularly Iranians, contemplated the materiality of the real world at large but did not reproduce it as such. Instead, they depicted their subjective mental reactions to the surrounding world and people in an intuitive way, in esoteric signs. The aim was to depict one’s mystical understanding of the world rather than to faithfully reproduce it.

Iranian artists recognized the microcosm and the macrocosm in the mirror of mysticism, poetry and myths: in the realm of imagination. They believed that the meaning of the universe is nothing but a transcendent imagination. Imagination, therefore, is an effective means of understanding existence. Material experiences and reason cannot lead one to the universal truth as effectively as active imagination.

After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Ali-Akbar Sadeghi touched upon various experiments in painting, stained glass and graphic design, which resulted in his acquiring brilliant technical skills in various fields of plastic arts. But his cooperation with the Children and Young Adults Intellectual Development Center as book illustrator and film producer was the beginning of a new period in his artistic career which he has ever since pursued at an accelerated pace and with stupendous diversity.

In his illustrations of the Hero of Heroes (1970) and other books, mostly published during 1970s, and in his five or six animation films, which range from the Seven Cities to Zal and Simurgh the Bird, he utilizes the apparent mold and space of miniature paintings, thus aligning himself with many contemporary painters who revived or renovated miniature painting in order to preserve traditions and adopt an indigenous iconography.

In this period, Sadeghi simplifies the forms and spaces of miniatures and applies this ultimate stylization to his colors as well as to his lines and forms. But what distinguishes Sadegi from his peers is his next step in exploring the world of miniatures. Beyond the apparent face of miniature forms, he reaches the essence of Iranian painting, and this essential discovery saves him from imitating, copying and playing with forms. He is instinctively aware of the intuitive perception ancient artists had of existence. He senses that miniature painting is the fantasy of this world, and not an exact reproduction. So, imagination is the foundation and not formal appearances. Thus one may discard the appearance of miniature forms and pay attention to its spirit which amount to understanding the imaginary space and apprehending the “symbolic world.” One can imagine the world differently and still function in a genuine way like ancient artists, and benefit from their knowledge about existence. The outer appearance disappears. A door opens. Sadeghi finds a way into the immensity of imagination, where the world can be recreated in fantasy and paint that transcendent reality in a mystic space. This immensity, this essential universe, is filled with poetry and mysticism. One can soar in it on the wings of myths and fables. Here, dreams and nightmares transcend actual reality. Symbols, mysteries and allegories rule in this eternal universe, which is the universe of reflections and enlightenments, of wonderful human fantasies, or artistic creation.

In the world of modern painting, when passing through new experiences, some avant-garde artists alter both foundations of their work, i.e. form and content in a harmonious way. That is, when they chose ‘subjectivity’ and instead of presenting an exact representation of Nature, reproduce their own subjective world, they change both their subject matter as well as their way of dealing with it, just as Picasso and Joan Miro changed both their vision of painting and their style of materializing it. But Sadeghi – like Dali and Magritte – cautiously retains one foundation unchanged, and that is the classical way of depicting his subjective world to which he has grown accustomed and which he has mastered, while altering the other foundation, which is the context of his world of paintings. Thus, in order to maintain his relationship with his innumerable audience he does not take the risk to alter both form and content simultaneously and while renewing his subjective world, he does not cut the string of his bonds with tradition and current visual habits.

The Inhabitants of the Imagined Planet

In visual terms, Sadegi’s oil paintings can be divided into several categories. He has created numerous paintings with specific elements, for example apples, trees, clouds, horses, horse-riders, knights, women, masks, water, boats …

He toys with a single theme or concept for a period of time, each time picturing its dimensions and qualities differently. At one time he paints the subject – an apple or a boat – in relation with other objects within a pictorial ensemble, at another he sets it by itself alone at the center of his canvas, as though he were picking every detail of his elaborate paintings one by one, exposing them to revealing light and dissecting their innards. Apples occupy a prominent place in his works, appearing each time in a different color and with a different meaning. Here it signifies life. There it symbolizes love. Elsewhere it is a metaphor of natural moderation, when it is a hermetic world the painter is enthusiastically tempted to crack open.

This treatment can be pursued at length in each of the painter’s various themes, in which he has indulged in all sorts of plays, be it a boat, water, fog, woman and… But these are to be seen rather than described, and what is said here is merely a reference to the mental function of the painter and how like an inexhaustible experimenter, he takes his ‘subject’ to the other side of tolerance to test it with pictorial experiences, each time creating an amazing world out of a simple element.

Conceptual Painting and Interpretations

The contemporary plastic world shies away from interpretation, because interpretation limits it to its apparent image. But conceptual paintings, which belong to the Eastern universe of fantasy and imagination, just as its mystical poems and tales, allow for interpretation and each viewer, according to his/her thoughts, finds a particular meaning or various interpretations in them, even if these meanings and interpretations are not compatible or the same as those the artist elaborated in some hidden place of his mind

In the rock-land desert, a herd of horses is circling within an invisible enclosure. A few are drowsy and unaware, while most are excited and frightened, because a cube of inflamed space is about to fall; a steely mass out of which six deadly spears are protruding. The herd is aware of the mortal menace and its horror of this inescapable fate is natural. Among the rocks lies an apple; a memory of a lost peace, a sign of a lovely innocence or a departed freshness.

The onslaught of that dreadful steel mass upon the circle of the existence of a herd of horses, which symbolizes beauty, dignity and dynamism, represents the eternal combat between the forces of Ahura-Mazad (God) against Ahriman’s (Devil’s) invasions, a theme often repeated in the Manichean space of Sadeghi’s works. In this Manichean space, evil is dominant, besieging beauty and the good, so often evil disguises itself as good or has engulfed good in its depth. Yet, hope is not lost in the turmoil, even if it is as small as an apple in a rocky desert. Such is the miracle of being a human being creating a spiritual garden against the material wilderness out of an apple.

His horsemen are often warriors from historic dynasties, legends or symbols of various powers in different eras. In terms of composition, the hero is depicted at the center of the painting and everything else in the margins and background takes shape as the result of this central image. This arrangement is repeated in many of Sadegi’s works, as for example in his Female Warrior where the subject is centrally located surrounded by tables, women and khatuns of Nasseri era, with an uninvited guest “Joconde”.

In Sadeghi’s Manichean universe, evil ultimately annihilates itself, as in the case of the four warriors who, out of ignorance or cruelty, draw sword against one another, each one mutilating the other and being mutilated by another. The similarity of their faces, attitudes and weapons, imply that these four knights are in fact one and the same, in a dual state preoccupied with opposing forces and bewildered at his own ordeal. These slayers and slain may even be innocent. Their crime is ignorance or a blind, hopeless enmity. Each is a paradoxical combination of the victim and the executioner. They have opted for evil. They have attempted to kill one another, and therefore themselves. It is as though Sadeghi is repeating this divine message: “To kill one man is like killing all mankind”.

A Life at a Glance

Sadeghi’s works can be categorized in several ways. One is to consider his oil paintings and watercolors separately, because of their clear differences. In Sadeghi’s own words, his watercolors are the outcome of his “recreation breaks” at home, after taking a rest from his oil paintings elaborated the whole day in the studio of his mind.

Whereas, in his oil paintings, he is attached to the world of meanings and a thematic view of existence, proceeding on the path of imaginary creation by precise construction and execution, in his watercolors, he often frees himself of restraints of concepts, nightmares, the surreal world and freely and hastily depicts the objects around him. Still life, panoramas constitute his materials. He simply, swiftly, not feeling indebted to imagination, he goes on making realistic representations of surrounding objects and forms: flowers, plants, fruit, lamps, bowls, buildings and natural views.

Perhaps his watercolors are his response to a deep need unconsciously driving him toward a different kind of painting. Accustomed to the ornate and masterful manner of creating paintings overfilled with imaginary figures, and respectful of conceptual painting, he is spontaneously and unconsciously drawn to a style which is in direct contrast to his works: no more imagination and imaginary painting, but direct representation of objects.

A. Structural Particularities

Accomplished Technique

Sadeghi masterfully applies painting techniques in the most appropriate way. He is able to construct and execute whatever he wishes and this technical skill and mastery is the fruit of forty five years of continuous work in various fields of visual arts, half of which make up the foundation to accomplish his creations in the past two decades. This technical skill often astonishes the painter’s audience, which is somehow intentional. He has paintings which can be viewed from two different angles. In fact, they are two paintings in one. They can be viewed from top or bottom, or left and right. In some of his paintings, this device has structurally perfected the work, although this is not always the case, occasionally giving way to unnecessary sophistication. This artistic tour de force reaches perfection in his Green Umbrellas.

Complete Sketches

Wherever the opportunity arises, the artist records his pictorial notes in notebooks, to which he later refers when painting. These sketches usually begin with a line. Then comes another line. The sketch takes shape piecemeal until it is carefully completed. The sketches of one of these notebooks were once published alongside their painted counterparts. The sketches and corresponding paintings were not very different and only certain fine details had been deleted or added. Sadeghi’s professional discipline is exemplary and one of the reasons for his voluminous output is this very outer discipline and inner order which he observes in his work.

Palette

Sadeghi’s coloring technique is extraordinarily varied and has an amazing power. He rarely uses original, pure paints. He mixes and combines. A single color theme often dominates his paintings, and this is the most arduous achievement in view of the extreme colorfulness of his works. The presence of blue, azure, gold, silver, orange is conspicuous in most of his works, although, just as in the case of his teacher, Nature, one cannot say which one he prefers. His colors are brilliant, vivid, pulsating, fluid, youthful. His seas are as varied as his apples and involve the same colors and shades.

B. Contextual Particularities

Manichean contradiction

It was pointed out that Sadeghi’s mind is involved in an incessant opposition whereby he sees the world and existence at the mercy of good and evil forces. The context of his paintings, as a whole and in their details, is based on this antagonism. At times this duality is obvious, as in the opposition of day and night, desert and sea, or flower and stone: at other times it is hidden and metaphorical, as body in the hand of passage of time, bondage yearning for freedom, germination wrestling with erosion.

Although evil overcomes, giving a bitter taste to his works, as the one where the desert yearns for the sea while the sea is an image on a wrapped scroll hanging from nowhere, yet, in this Manichean world filled with evil, a liberating light of hope ever glimmers and the painter does not consider the domination of any of these forces to be absolute, and this is the result of his doubt in the judgment of expedient Reason and at last he finds Love to be the salvation.

Humoristic mind

Sadeghi’s faces the surrounding reality with humor and, unbelieving in history and its current clichés, takes refuge in a superior reality where the logic of dreams, inversion, displacement, ambiguity and grotesque space rules.

Legend, Lyricism and Epic

Sadeghi’s looks upon history but does not believe in it. He is a history-watcher rather than a historiographer, just as he is a legend observer and not a legend painter. He sees the world as a legend fabricated by others. Finding the reality in such cloak, he gets involved with it. In this involvement, he makes no judgment. He only records. He leaves the judgment to the viewer. He likes people and is familiar with their folklore. He looks upon the era’s superstitions and rituals, their customs and beliefs. He records them without judging, for he does not see himself separate from people.

Sometimes he looks at the world lovingly, as a dream of crystal and tears. Look at the house with a fountain of mist pouring on the lush green valley through its window. This is a materialized paradise of lyrical peace untainted with sadness. Or look at the painting in which a building is visible amidst the grass, fog and cloud, with columns and arcades of the substance and color of air, perceptible but inaccessible, just as a well turned poem. Sometimes the epic recorder is saddened at the fate of heroes who, like Don Quixote, have set foot in the world at the wrong time. Occasionally fairies appear in his paintings beside or against monsters and devils.

He dose not flee into the past. For him, time is eternal and the past and the future happen coincidently with the ephemeral present. The simultaneity of non-contemporary eras gives him the opportunity to reflect unhindered with conventional divisions of time, alongside ordinary men-who are unbounded by temporal, spatial and racial constrains and to ultimately deplore their fate with deep love.

Sadeghi’s is the narrator of contemporary man’s complicated and contradictory world. Such complexity extends from the heart of the atom to the periphery of the galaxy, with human being left alone in this wondrous world. The artist sadly paints human solitude amid the crowd, but does not surrender to this loneliness and isolation. At the end of this smoky horizon, he thinks about a sunny future in which every human being empathizes with every other human being. Unlike Man of the Age of Reason, he is not solely infatuated with rationality and science. Rather, just as his ancestors, he still seeks the wisdom of life in art and despairingly hopes that art would teach him all that the science fails to bestow to human beings and the world.

Sadeghi’s last exhibition was held at Aran Gallery last week (from 22 April 2011) showing a new stage in his inexhaustible artistic activity. In fact, what is said above does not include the last two decades of his life and works which hopefully will be dealt in the near future.

Born in 1974 in Tehran (Iran)
Lives and works in Tehran (Iran)
Education:
2005-2007 BA Azad University, Tehran (Iran)
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2009 Silk Road Gallery, ARCO Madrid, Spain
2005 Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2005 Barg Gallery, Tehran
2004 Fatima Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
1990 Bamdad Gallery
Selected group exhibitions:
2009 In & Out, Milan, Italy
2006 “East of Imagination”, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran
2005 2nd Beijing International Art Biennale, Beijing, China
2004 6th Iranian Painting Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran
2003 A Spiritual Vision, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran
Awards:
2004 Tehran 6th International Art Biennial, Juror’s Choice prize and award for the best work
2005 2nd Beijing International Art Biennial, the prize for Excellent Work
2003 Voss Corporation for the best work at Tehran International painting Biennial
2002 Peace Conference, award for the best work
First place, National students art competitions
Art Auctions:
2009 Christie’s Dubai
2010 Christie’s Dubai
2010 Bonhams

I don’t see myself in you
In you I see another

Translated by Roya Monajem

Afshin Pirhashemi, the young ingenious experimentalist painter was born in 1974 in Tehran. He began painting in childhood and held his first exhibition when sixteen at Bamdad Gallery, Tehran, while simultaneously participating in a group exhibition at Seyhoon Gallery. His works do not find their way to any biennials inside the country until 2004 when he wins the juror’s award as well as the visitors’ prize for the best work, and in the following year, he wins the prize for ‘excellent work’ in the second Beijing international art biennial.
To this day Afshin Pirshami has held 15 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 50 group exhibitions inside and outside the country.

Refusing to cut his long hair he was forced to change high schools until he finally convinces his father whose library he preferred to school, to yield to his son’s wish to study arts, thereby obtaining his bachelor of arts in 2007 from Azad University, Tehran. Before that he received a grant from the Italian Ambassador to study at Rome Art Academy for two months.

His love for Mathematics and its unknown X can in itself explain why his paintings are polyptych, like mathematical equations ( X+Y=Z, for example), why women, this seemingly ‘unknown’ of the human history make his protagonists, also the name of one of his well-known collections, and why he worked solely in black and white, and even until the present time everything is apparently in black and white in his mind and he can express himself best in these two colors, which can be regarded as two absolutes, only meaningful in mathematics.

He learns painting basically by copying the works of well-known figures of the art-history, as he believes in this way one can intuitively grasp their lifelong work-experience as well. He ran a private art gallery, for several years in Tehran and in this way not only he acquaints himself with other artists and their artworks, but also learns the trade of art-business. He believes, “it is the artist who dictates the market prices by producing good works.”

Pirhashemi is a figurative painter, a kind of figurative, and now characteristic, style associating Iranian Miniatures and Japanese painting on one hand, and Pop and Kitsch on the other. Although there is no prominent trace of his native conventional elements and clichés in his works, nevertheless they somehow reveal their Iranian origin, which Pirhashemi attributes to impressions he received by assiduously reading books on Iranian literature and history he found in abundance in his father’s library.

In an interview with Canvas he says: My canvas is like a film, like a movie. I am creating this person and she is like an actress, so she can take on all these scenarios, depending on my movie and my mood.” (1)

The main model of his paintings is his wife, originating from a childhood belief that the model of a painter should either by his wife, his love or Jesus Christ. (2) He came to know his wife Fatima in his first exhibition (1996) and married her two years later. “I get my energy from women’s secrets, the lives they never want to disclose. I don’t judge them but I just feel that women have elements which give me energy,” explains Pirhashemi. (3)

The conspicuous presence of women in his works makes him to be known as a feminist painter, while in relation to his BMW series with one of them sold at a high price at Bonhams, Pirhashemi says: This is in fact an antifeminist series. I felt feminists don’t do their job properly, I mean they rather spoil it. No doubt my feminist approach in this series was unconscious at the beginning, and only later became conscious. The BMW series is quite patriarchal and men will like them more. I totally destroyed the identity inferred from my previous works… this series is a protest to those who think they are helping women, and instead spoil the work. (4)

Pirhashemi’s paintings deals with complexities of contemporary life in Iran through a unique carefully controlled combination of realistic photo-paintings of Iranian figures and gothic imagination. In addition to his father’s high respect for the opposite sex, Botticelli’s women intensified his admiration for feminine form and psyche. Arrangement of figures on a plain white background not only furthers trompe l’oeil, but also grants a sense of monumentality and timelessness to them. The lack of extraneous detail, combined with keenly observed features on the figures concentrates attention solely on the protagonists and the relationships between them.

His success in Tehran’s sixth painting biennial followed by Beijing biennial opened his way to major art auctions. While the hammer on his works and thus his fame began to sound continuously louder, he has nevertheless been perseveringly working in his studio in Tehran, experiencing depressed gloomy states. “This fame has changed a lot of people around me, although I haven’t changed,” he tells Canvas. “They have changed, particularly after April 2010 Dubai Christie’s auction when the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the sale of his Rapture triptych for $554500.” (5)

2003- 100×620 cm – Oil on canvas- Winner of the Second Bijing international Art Biennale China 2005

Despite his significant accomplishments outside the country, Pirhashemi lives and works in Iran: “I can’t work outside Iran, there is no source of inspiration whatsoever elsewhere. If I’d left, it would feel as though I ceased to be an artist because it is the controversy that drives me. It is with such approach that he paints Jesus, Rasputin, Rumi, only because they are controversial figures within a religious context… “(6) The news of his achievements is published in local newspapers, but not his paintings due to their themes.

He regards the black and white period of his work representing the dark stage of his life and with a change in his outlook and introduction of colors to his works; he does not wish to go back to painting in black and white which now gives him strange emotions and an unfamiliar feeling.

His last solo exhibition which can be considered as an attempt to create a relationship between mystical texts and painting was held in 2009 in Homa Gallery, Tehran with the opening verse by Shams, Rumi’s Master, I do not see myself in you/In you I see another, decorating the exhibition catalogue. In an interview with Etemad Meli Newspaper, in reply to the question that his paintings are mystical, he says: “It was Mohammad Shamkhani who first pointed to the mystical feature of my work in 1998… since then whenever there was a spiritual art exhibition; my work went on the wall.” (6) In the same interview he refers to a video-art produced by two young film-makers, Keyvan Alimohammadi and Omid Bonakdar on Pirhashemi’s paintings, together with a selection of Shams’ statements in early 80s and he uses their selection in the catalogue of the same exhibition, held after four years of absence on the national art scene, even though he performed two or three controversial projects each year as for example breaking sale records in art auctions.

His recent measure to launch Pirhashemi prize (Pprize, a sum of $10,000) for an annual national art competition initiated five years ago by Homa Gallery under the title “Selected New Generation” is an admirable gesture in supporting young visual artists

Pirhashemi’s characteristic approach, his continuous experimentation and his achievements while still going through the last years of his 30s promises an even more brilliant future for him.

Foote notes:

1. Interview with Canvas, Looking at you/Looking at me, Sept-Oct, 2010
2. Interview with Etemad Melli Newspaper, They think I am a Sufi, 23 Khordad 1388 (2009)
3. Canvas, ibid
4. Interview with Farhikhtegan, 20 Mehr 1388 (2009)
5. Canvas, ibid
6. Etemad Melli, ibid.