Persia meets Europe in Zurich

by le mag, Euronews

The artistic dialogue between Persia and Europe is at the heart of a new exhibition in the Swiss city of Zurich.

It explores the way Europe and Persia, today’s Iran, began to inch closer 400 years ago – politically, economically, culturally and artistically. Europe dispatched trading companies and religious orders; the shah sent his ambassadors. Rubens drew inspiration from Persian miniatures and Muhammad Zaman created works inspired by Italian and French painters.

An exchange that lives on to this day according to curator Axel Langer: “I think it really comes from both sides. There isn’t one side which has less or more [impact] than the other. But, what I thought is interesting is that the two react differently to each others’ art,” he said.

The adaptation of famous engravings by Italian artist Marcantonio Raimondi is a prime example of the way European art influenced Persian painters. Semi-naked bodies had long featured in Persian painting, but nudes were used solely to illustrate stories and were not intended to be sensual. The encounter with European art brought about a dramatic artistic evolution.

“The Persian nude was something that might have been developed through contact with European sources. We don’t expect it, because we have a certain prejudice or certain idea of Islamic ethical behaviour, and we think this didn’t exist, but it is not true. it was for private use only. It was not copying European sources but they turned it to something new,” said Axel Langer.

Persian art was enthusiastically imitated in Poland. The first silk sashes, which soon became a must-have accessory among the Polish nobility, were brought over from Persia in the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century, sashes with Persian patterns were made in Poland.
The exhibition also features artworks by seven contemporary Iranian artists that reflect the globalisation of cross-cultural exchange:

“We integrated contemporary art because we wanted to show that Iranian art is also global. That means it is not influenced anymore by Europeans or only the West, but this is a kind of art that is reacting to a global market or to global ideas, which might react to an Iranian presence or situation, but which are also giving ideas to audiences all over the world.”

“The Fascination of Persia” runs at Zurich’s Rietberg Museum until January 21.

The dialogue between Persia and Europe is echoed by the work of the Nour Ensemble, a unique artistic experiment combining Iranian and European music. Euronews’ Mohammad Mohammadi attended a concert by the group at the Zurich museum.

The head of the ensemble, Christophe Rezai, explained how it came about: “Why did I chose medieval music for the European part of our ensemble? The reason is I think it has three elements in common with Persian music. Firstly, it is modal. Secondly, it is inspired by the people. And the other common element is improvisation, which played an important part in medieval music,” he said.

The ensemble is made up of French and Persian artists, who share their musical tradition and reinvent traditional Kurdish, Persian and European repertoires.

“Everyone in our ensemble plays his part by bringing in his own musical tradition. Each artist engages in the conversation in his own language. For instance, one part is Iranian and then turns European, before the two are mixed to create a new language,” said Christophe Rezai.

The outcome? A creative melting pot of classical, traditional and contemporary music.


Via Euronews

Infinite Regress

Two Iranian Artists Multiply Their Spiritual Images

The Golden Gate Bridge and clouds are kaleidoscoped to resemble the mind-expanding art adorning mosques. Courtesy SF Weekly

by Jonathan Curiel, SF Weekly

With an arts tradition that goes back more than 5,000 years, and a modern art scene that embraces everything from graffiti to avant-garde film, Iran is one of the world's greatest countries to experience the visual arts. It's a travesty that Iran has been off-limits to most Americans since 1979, when a revolution turned it into a pariah state. But the détente that has emerged on the political front with the election of a new Iranian president (who, by the way, is on Twitter) parallels the opening of three new exhibits that are giving Americans a first-hand look at the intricacies of Iranian art and sculpture.

The largest show, "Iran Modern," is at New York's Asia Society, but San Francisco has two sterling exhibits: "The First Family" at Haines Gallery, which features the work of longtime Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian, and "Twisted Sisters: Reimagining Urban Portraiture" at San Francisco City Hall, which features the work of Sanaz Mazinani, who spent her early life in Tehran and now lives in Bernal Heights.

Mazinani's montages take traditional Persian motifs and infuse them with modern touches — and a San Francisco aesthetic. Golden Gate Bridge, for example, has red sections of the span's towers floating in a blue sky, where they connect with cloud puffs and geometric shapes to form an otherworldly kaleidoscope. Influenced by patterns found in traditional Persian carpets, and utilizing Persian blues that adorn some of Iran's most dazzling structures, Mazinani made Golden Gate Bridge for a series she calls "Forever in the Sky." In 16th and Mission, also on display at City Hall, Mazinani has tall, thin palm trees floating in the air next to an assemblage of alluring shapes. In Sutro Tower, it's the top of San Francisco's tallest transmission structure that hovers high in the sky, Persian-style. The patterns — like the patterns of floral shapes, calligraphy, and architectural swoops that cover Iranian mosques — are designed to both focus the mind and free it.

"I was doing research, and I found that the reason Iranian mosques are covered in this pattern is to allow your eyes to fall into it and to go elsewhere intellectually," says Mazinani. "It's a spiritual thing."

"Twisted Sisters," which celebrates San Francisco's Sister City relationship with Zurich, Switzerland, showcases the work of five Bay Area artists who tear down touristic stereotypes of San Francisco. Mazinani, who's 35, was an ideal choice for the exhibit — someone who's lived in four countries (Iran, Turkey, Canada, the United States) and knows how easy it is for reductive impressions to become the normative view. Her family left Iran in 1989, after the Iran-Iraq war that killed more than a million people. Mazinani, who moved to the Bay Area in 2009 to get an MFA from Stanford, frequently addresses issues of war and conflict in her work, as with her photographic series of the Occupy movement and her art series examining media representations of war. Mazinani's "Sky" series combines painterly touches with photography. Mazinani has been taking images of clouds for a decade.

"I was always really interested in borders and issues around land and landlessness, and being an immigrant, and I found it really rewarding to look up at the sky and see these beautiful clouds moving — without any limitations, without checkpoints, without passports," she says. "I was making works about war and conflicts and activism and all this stuff and this is a way for me to also make it beautiful. It creates an accessible way for people to enter my work. They can see what they want in it. I really like having work that's open to interpretation."

Monir Farmanfarmaian's art at Haines Gallery also has an interpretive quality, and adopts patterns that are completely transfixing. Farmanfarmaian, who's almost 90, used thousands of mirror pieces to create shimmering triangles, squares, hexagons, decagons, and other shapes. Mirrors are overlaid on mirrors. Angles jut into other angles. Approaching one of Farmanfarmaian's creations is like approaching a hall of cascading mirrors, except that Farmanfarmaian's works are small — anywhere from 2 to 4 feet across.

In Persian culture, the mirror is used frequently in art, architecture, and religious settings to signify a connection to the divine. So Farmanfarmaian's art at Haines Gallery — besides being intensely beautiful — has an underlying spiritual element. It's there if you want it, just as it is in Mazinani's art. Like Mazinani, Farmanfarmaian has lived in both Iran and the United States — Farmanfarmaian's initial tenure was in the 1940s and 1950s, in New York, and put her in touch with some of America's most formidable artists of the time, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol. Warhol was a fan. Farmanfarmaian's early years in the U.S., where she studied at Parsons School of Design and at Cornell, changed her life and her art. So did returning to Iran in the late '50s, where she gave Iranians a new way to experience the art form of mirrors.

"I did art because I loved to express myself, but didn't expect that I'm doing something unusual. Now, I realize that I have done something unusual that brought the medium of mirror work and geometric design for the public," Farmanfarmaian told an interviewer last year. "It was always in the ceiling or the wall or the palaces, but it never was in people's houses."

Iran's 1979 revolution was devastating to Farmanfarmaian. The country's religious authorities confiscated her early works, and she fled to New York — though she returned to Iran in 2004. She says Iran makes the only type of thin glass that's ideal for her work. Farmanfarmaian laughs a lot in interviews. She's happy to still be an active artist using a medium she loves. Mirrors, she says, give everyone "a reflection of your soul." That type of Sufi thought is embedded in Iran's culture, and is carried — not surprisingly — in the art of both Farmanfarmaian and Mazinani, wherever they choose to live or exhibit.

Details: Through Jan. 17 at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, S.F. Free; 554-6093 or sfartscommission.org.Through Dec. 21 at Haines Gallery, 49 Geary, S.F. Free; 397-8114 or hainesgallery.com.

Via SF Weekly

Politics on canvas

Nicky Nodjoumi and the New York enclave

The artist's work transcends borders and displays a worldliness that is a hallmark of Iranian artists in New York.

Nodjoumi's artwork walks a fine line between art and politics.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Hasty Retreat, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 50 in / 177.8 x 127 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

by Hamid Dabashi, Al Jazeera

The corner of Laight and Hudson in New York, where the newly established Taymour Grahne Gallery was exhibiting its very first show, seemed like an odd place for an Iranian artist to reflect back on his lifetime achievement. But early in September, the gallery was the scene of a spectacular opening featuring the large-scale oil paintings of Nicky Nodjoumi, Chasing the Butterfly and Other Recent Paintings.

After decades of unwavering, principled, and quiet work, Nodjoumi has finally arrived as a major aesthetic visionary of his contemporary time, having carved a commanding angle on our lived experiences from the assured perspective of a global worldliness that has patiently and consistently crossed all artificial borders of identity and politics.

Today it is the overwhelming political force of his art that immediately attracts his viewers. The Huffington Post captured the very essence of the evident political implication of Nodjoumi's art when covering his exhibition: "Iranian Artist Nicky Nodjoumi Talks Revolutions, Secret Police And The Vietnam War."

Politics as art

This is perhaps self-evident and even unavoidable. But in response to a question regarding the influence of current politics on his work, Nodjoumi responds: "Yes and no. I follow current events, especially in Iran, almost religiously. Aside from world events, however, I have other preoccupations. Naturally, when I start to work, the political events of the day occupy part of my mind, but imagination is also a part of the function of the mind. Inspirations that shape my work come from a lot of different places." How are we exactly to read that self-professed interface between fact and fantasy, reality and imagination, politics and aesthetics?

On another occasion, a commentator suggested, "Nodjoumi's artwork walks a fine line between art and politics" - in response to which he muses, "I don't have a clear idea. I play with ideas and put them together." That fine line, if we were to follow that appropriate metaphor, is the fact that the politics of our contemporary realities occasions (not influences) Nodjoumi's aesthetics.

In yet another descriptive reading of his work, by Holland Cutter of the New York Times, we read perhaps a more accurate angle on the manner in which politics and aesthetics of Nodjoumi's work cohabit:

"The new paintings at Taymour Grahne are political too, but the tone is different. Visually the work is light, even airy, and filled with absurdist, mocking incident. Men in suits and mullahs in robes share space with horses, apes and apparitional figures from classical Persian paintings. Almost nothing feels grounded or organic: figures are composed of mismatched legs, torsos and heads, and seem unbound by perspective or gravity. Only in a series of magisterial black-and-white ink drawings does the mood tense up." 

To understand the aesthetic force of that cohabitation we need first to come to terms with the imaginative geography of its production.

Storytelling on canvas

I have known Nodjoumi's work since my youth as an undergraduate student in Tehran of 1970's, and have followed his extraordinarily poised and purposeful artistic career closely ever since, and particularly when we both found ourselves living in New York over the last quarter of a century - and I've had many occasions to talk to him and write about his work, on and off camera.

Nodjoumi's surreal hybridisation of historical and phantasmagorical imageries intercut with sharp political commentaries and none of the reviewers who have reported on this show could have missed those strong ingredients. There are as many Shia clerics loitering on his canvases as clean-shaven European- and American- looking businessmen and diplomats; as many people as animals; as many formal occasions as sexually explicit positions.

He is a storyteller with a solid command over his stream of visual consciousness. He draws and paints people and then formally and ceremoniously cuts them into pieces and shapes and designs. He loves to pile people and animals and body organs on top of each other irreverently and provocatively. He paints as if he were an old-fashioned pardeh-dar storyteller, reciting old stories of heroes off a canvas, though his attention span is punctuated and interrupted by the urgency, immediacy, obscenity, and schizophrenic absurdity of the tales he wishes to tell.

Iranian artists' NYC enclave  

Born, raised, and having come to aesthetic consciousness and artistic fame in Iran, Nikzad (Nicky) Nodjoumi was a virtuoso painter long before he packed his belongings and moved to New York. He began to cultivate a distinct artistic signature in his homeland with a visual audacity that was globally resonant long before he came upon greener pastures.

In New York he and a few other Iranian artists - notably his close friends, the preeminent Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi, the late virtuoso Ardeshir Mohassess, and the globally celebrated Shirin Neshat, become central to the expatriate community of artists who now called New York home. The term exile is a deeply misleading term in this case. Yes these artists, whose invisible enclave includes the pioneering figures of Manouchehr Yektai and Siah Armajani, have been forced to leave their homeland against their will, but the term "exile" also casts them in a nativist disposition that is entirely alien to their work.

Artists like Nodjoumi were worldly when they were in Iran - and they are worldly now that they are in New York. The aesthetic result of this historical fact is the formation of a palpable trans-social signature that defines each and every one of their multiple and varied work. There was as much New York in Nodjoumi when he lived and worked in Iran, as there is Tehran in him now that he lives and works in New York.

There is no difference in this regard among the works of Nodjoumi, Yektai, Neshat, Mohassess, and Naderi. They are as much Iranian as they are American - and that fact categorically dismantles the binary politics of location that habitually exhibits them in one or another curatorial context. The advantage of a solo exhibition of Nodjoumi at Taymour Grahne Gallery is precisely the singular opportunity for this innate quality of the work to come out effectively without the imposition of continued curatorial practices of group exhibitions of one sort or another that keep regurgitating stale and mothballed notions of Eurocentric or (even worse) "parallel" "modernism" ad absurdum.

Understanding contemporary art requires a complete and categorical abandoning of the innately exoticising curatorial practice of the flawed ethnographic gaze that informs much of contemporary art exhibitions and criticism, when it begins and ends (in confirmation or negation) with the designation of an even more flawed category of "Western/non-Western" dichotomy. The politics of location that informs any work of contemporary art must come to terms with the border-crossing fact of all art as it has happened anywhere in the world, effectively imagining a liberation geography constitutionally transgressive against every and all borders. Nicky Nodjoumi's art is a living example of this claim.


Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York, and the author of the world of Persian literary humanism (2012).

Via Al Jazeera

My Wicked Persian Carpet

Taymour Grahne Gallery to Present Reza Derakshani's ‘My Wicked Persian Carpet’, 10/29-12/3   

by Visual Arts News Desk, Broadway World

Following its much-touted launch in September 2013, Taymour Grahne Gallery presents new works by Iranian painter, musician and performance artist Reza Derakshani. Expanding on previous investigations of ornamentation and abstraction, "My Wicked Persian Carpet" incorporates the artist's newfound experimentation with materials such as glitter to consider ongoing themes of life and death, faith and fear, love and revulsion, beauty and viciousness, light and darkness. Flat colorfields and a lack of perspective, always a signature component of Derakshani's compositions, meld tradition and political references into highly textured, jewel-like paintings. The series derives its raw strength from an uncomfortable contrast-deceptively beautiful, almost hedonistic decorative qualities cut with bleak, apocalyptic manifestations of death-a result that is hypnotically and universally unsettling.

Born in the rustic countryside of Sangsar, Iran, Derakshani's detailed observation of the natural world is apparent in his work, as is his inspiration from Persian art and folkloric traditions; the imagery of gardens, epics, and miniatures is a critical part of his visual narrative. After leaving Iran in the aftermath of the revolution, Derakshani incorporated influences of Western modernist painting and Persian motifs to develop a visual language of his own, which richly and often piercingly addresses the challenges of calling multiple places home, and the complexity and trauma of modern Iranian cultural history.

This latest series was motivated by Derakshani's return to his native country, where, disappointed by what he saw after decades living overseas, a commentary on the state of Iran today has manifested itself in "My Wicked Persian Carpet." However, as Scott Indrisek writes in his essay accompanying the exhibition catalog: "Defining Derakshani as a political painter would be reductive-shrinking his oeuvre into little more than an extended, anguished salvo against a regime-and it's more interesting to note the unavoidable ways that such concrete realities are instead ingested, and transformed, by the artist."

This is echoed by Derakshani himself, who explains: "I've long tried to steer clear of politics, but it's always been there in the background, and I see the Persian carpet as a symbol of Iran itself. It is something that Persians are proud of, a traditional art that can be absolutely magnificent, yet perhaps we hide behind these traditional symbols. We have huge problems in Iran which we need to face." Nowhere is this more evident than in the work from which the exhibition derives its name: a grinning blue skull stares at the viewer, floating on a thickly layered reworking of the familiar pattern of Persian carpets. Others, such as My Lovely Nuked Red Carpet (2013) continue the theme; the patterns more are subtle, yet through a pixelated haze the rich purple mushroom cloud of a sparkling nuclear reaction takes centre stage, dominating the canvas.

Skulls are at the forefront here, a leitmotif in this series, although they have made prior appearances in Derakshani's work. Works such as Searching for God! (2013) and A Rainbow for Every Life (2013) isolate this memento mori, a macabre reminder of our own mortality suspended in a shimmering sea. And yet, for Derakshani, rather like the Mexican Day of the Dead, there is as much celebration in these skulls as there is a reminder of our own fragility, the cycle of life and death. "By adding glitter, in a way, it makes these skulls beautiful," says Derakshani, "it brings them to life and turns them into a celebration, an affirmation of life."

In the lower gallery, Derakshani will present a series of smaller works inspired by Persian miniatures. Traditional manuscript illustrations have been an obsession of Derakshani's since the late 1980's, and this latest body of work leans further towards abstraction. With disjointed-almost hallucinatory-figures figures and coded hints towards an underlying narrative, the paintings present a fractured retelling of the beloved tragic love story of Shirin and Farhad or the epic Shahnameh, while simultaneously echoing more recent incidents of violence, political upheaval, and social dislocation.


Via Broadway World

Calligraffiti

Deitch Takes Another Look at ‘Calligraffiti’ for New York Gallery

Leila Pazooki, This Is Not Green, 2009,  Illuminated neon tubes,  19.29 x 78.74 in / 49 x 200 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

by Carol Kino, The ArtsBeat, New York Times

Last month Jeffrey Deitch resigned as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Although he won’t step down immediately, the art world is abuzz with rumors about what he’ll do next. Perhaps a clue to his future interests may be found  in “Calligraffiti: 1984-2013,” an upcoming show at the Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea opening Sept. 5.

It will explore the relationship between graffiti and calligraphy with the work of nearly 50 artists, from Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring and his protégé “LA II” (as Angel Ortiz is known). Many of the artists are Middle Eastern, including Shirin Neshat and Hossein Zenderoudi, and several are street artists, like the French-Tunisian star eL Seed.

The show essentially updates “Calligraffiti,” an exhibition that he and Ms. Heller collaborated on in 1984, back when he was a Citibank art adviser with a passion for street art, and she was an Upper East Side dealer specializing in art from the Middle East, primarily Iran.

Curated by Mr. Deitch, the 1984 show juxtaposed graffitists like Fab Five Freddy with Mr. Zenderoudi and modernist scrawlers like Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet. (Mr. Deitch came up with the idea, he said, while he was between apartments and sleeping in Ms. Heller’s gallery.)

This time, Mr. Deitch served as Ms. Heller’s sounding board, rather than curator. But he is excited about the new possibilities for street art offered by the turmoil in the Middle East, especially as exemplified by eL Seed, who started as a street artist and is now working on a major commission from the Qatar Museums Authority to paint a series of tunnels in Doha.

“He is in a very genuine way working in this fusion between a calligraphic technique coming out of Arabic script,” Mr. Deitch said, “and an awareness of international graffiti language. When we did the show originally in 1984, there wasn’t anyone like this.” But now, he added, “there is this actual fusion of the two traditions.”

In the catalog he wrote that, ”Graffiti has become an important part of the imagery that has defined the Arab Spring.” While New York’s early taggers had to rely on subway cars to carry their messages, he added, “today new communications platforms like Instagram and YouTube have given street art a new resonance,” instantly communicated around the world.

Mr. Deitch is already at work on several independent projects beyond the one or two he intends to complete for the Museum of Contemporary Art. He would not talk about them until he had “concrete plans with the dates, space.” But yes, he confirmed, they will be in New York.

Pouran Jinchi, Transparency #13, 2012, Plexiglass and permanent marker, 23 x 3 in / 58.42 x 7.62 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

Shirin Neshat, Zahra, 2008, C-print and ink, 11 x 14 in / 27 x 36 cm, Unique. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

 

 Hadieh Shafie, Grid 27, 2013, Ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 29.5 x 41 in / 75 x 104 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

Farhar Moshiri, Untitled (My Heart is Your Love’s Play Toy), 2004, Oil on canvas, 57 x 44 in / 144.8 x 111.8 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

Jackson Pollock, Untitled 1, 1951 (Printed 1964),  Screen print,  23 x 29 in / 58.42 x 73.66 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

Via Leila Heller Gallery and The ArtsBeat, New York Times

Iran Modern

Video: 57 Images of Amazing Pre-Revolution Iranian Art in 28 Seconds

by Tahiat Mahboob, Asia Society

On September 6, Asia Society Museum unveils a landmark exhibition, Iran Modern, featuring artwork from painters, photographers, designers, and sculptors created during the three decades leading up to the 1979 revolution.

Together, these unique and extraordinary pieces offer a fresh look at 20th-century Iranian cultural history — a period when Iranian artists engaged with the world through the Tehran Biennial in Iran and overseas exhibitions. Institutions both in Iran and around the world collected their works.

Enjoy an advance look at this groundbreaking exhibition in the video above.

Related Links:

Iran Modern

 

Video: The Story Behind 'Iran Modern,' a Landmark Exhibition of Iranian Art

Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art, On Display and In Demand

Via Asia Society

Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art, On Display and In Demand

Masters of Persian, Reza Derakshani (2008). Mixed media on canvas.  Courtesy Muftah.

by Nima Shirazi, Muftah

An upcoming exhibition at the Asia Society in New York City will highlight over 100 pieces of pre-revolution Iranian art – paintings, photography, drawing and sculpture – created by “the most noteworthy Iranian artists of the 1950s to 1970s” compiled to “shed light on a period when Iranian artists were engaged with the world through the Tehran Biennial in Iran as well as exhibitions overseas, and when their work was collected by institutions inside and outside of Iran.”

The landmark loan exhibition, entitled Iran Modern and running from September 6, 2013 to January 5, 2013, “maps the genesis of Iranian modernism in order to argue that the development of modernist art is inherently more globally interconnected than previously understood” and “provides a dynamic perspective on Iran’s rich culture and history for the public.”

Meanwhile, a recent article in Art Radar Asia, an online magazine that tracks contemporary art trends, calls Iran “one of the most prolific and productive countries for contemporary art” in the Middle East and identifies eight innovative, influential and internationally-renowned Iranian artists of the past 35 years.

Included in Art Radar‘s list and accompanied by concise and illuminating blurbs about their work are photographer Abbas Kowsari, abstract calligrapher Golnaz Fathi, and painters Afshin Pirhashemi, Alireza Adambakan, and Babak Roshaninejad.

Here is an excerpt:

Reza Derakshani

Born in Sangsar in 1952, painter, musician and performance artist Reza Derakshani grew up in a tent in the countryside. His nomadic childhood inspires his art. He studied art in Tehran and Pasadena, California. In 1983, following the Islamic Revolution, he lived in exile in New York and Italy. He currently lives and works in Dubai and Austin, Texas.

Derakshani’s gallery, Kashya Hildebrand, had this to say about the artist and his method of working: “By investigating the essential nature of his cultural identity in a singularly original manner, he has connected to the spirit of the most exciting art made internationally today.”

Derakshani’s artwork is collected by high-profile figures such as Leon Black, Sting and Trudie Styler and the Royal family of Abu Dhabi. The British Museum has recently commissioned new works.

Afshin Pirhashemi

Afshin Pirhashemi, born in 1974 in Urmia, where he lives now, is known for his black and white photo-realistic paintings of women.

His artistic talent was seen from childhood. As a teenager, he received a grant from the Italian Ambassador to study at the Rome Art Academy, and then received his BA at Azad University.

According to ArtTactic, the price range for his paintings is from USD 10,000- 50,000, and he is listed as having high market confidence. Pirhashemi won awards for his painting at the 2003 Tehran 6th International Art Biennial, and the 2004 Beijing Art Biennial Award.

Farhad Moshiri

According to Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Tehran-based Farhad Moshiri, who was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1963 and educated at California Institute of the Arts, “overturns both pop culture and highbrow imagery by transforming it into figurative artwork.” His works are often hand-embroidered and sparkle with his use of glitter, sequins, and crystals. Even though his shimmery works look playful, he is addressing  ”the flaws of contemporary Iran all while toying with its traditional forms; he acknowledges the appeal of the western world in addition to its limitations.”

Marriage, Afshin Pirhashemi (2012). Oil on canvas. Ayyam Gallery. Courtesy Muftah.

God in Color, Farhad Moshiri (2012). Hand embroidery on canvas. Galerie Perrotin. Courtesy Muftah.

From high-priced auctions in Tehran to exhibitions in New York, Iranian artwork from the past six-plus decades – created in the midst of monarchy, modernization, foreign intervention and popular revolution – never ceases to reflect the complexity of Iranian culture, reinvent itself, attract attention and amaze the world.

Untitled, by Abolghassem Saidi (1973). Oil on canvas. Collection of Sam Bayat and Charlotte Denise Madeleine Bayat. Courtesy Muftah.

Via Muftah

Chasing the Butterfly

7 September - 12 October 2013

 

Nicky Nodjoumi, Inspector's Scrutiny, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 85 x 130 in / 215.9 x 330.2 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

This September, Taymour Grahne Gallery opens its doors with an inaugural exhibition by acclaimed Iranian painter Nicky Nodjoumi. Featuring large-scale oil paintings in the main gallery and works on paper in the lower gallery, Chasing the Butterfly and Other Recent Paintings explores Nodjoumi’s surreal hybridization of historic and contemporary imagery intercut with sharp political commentary.

Born 1942, in Kermanshah, Iran and based in New York since 1981, Nodjoumi uses his practice to explore the intersection of his personal history with the politics of alienation and dislocation.  Combining historic references, social realist critique and surrealist abstraction, his compositions feature multi-layered human figures engaged with bizarrely counter-poised animals, theatrically staged against indeterminate backdrops and barren landscapes.

Not unlike the work of the German Social Realist Neo Rauch, Nodjoumi’s paintings suggest the intention of a narrative reading, but are instead cryptic and open-ended.  In Inspector’s Scrutiny, 2012, warriors from traditional Persian miniatures join with anonymous suited men in the struggle to tether and subjugate a supine horse, creating a scene that is both politically charged and ambiguously unresolved. Nodjoumi’s figures are continually spliced and rejoined on fractured registers with mismatched proportions, a spatial discrepancy that heightens the work’s disjointed layering of history and identity. Underlining this jarring sense of removal from reality and providing material textuality to the work are the artist’s sketches and clippings, also on display.

This uneasy perspective is balanced by the artist’s humorous, yet bitter satire.  In Time to Pray, 2012, a family of apes grouped in a pose redolent of ritual worship are in fact engaged in coital activity, overseen by a supplicating mullah, who seems to vindicate the absurdity of adherence to religious stricture.

In Nodjoumi’s works on paper, politicians and businessmen cut from the day’s paper are extricated from their public personae and recontextualized in undefined circumstances, often framed within the confines of a rigidly structured grid, echoing unnamed systems of authoritarian order.

As artist, writer and curator Phong Bui considers in the exhibition’s accompanying catalog essay, “Nodjoumi’s newest paintings evidence a negotiation between political convictions—ones that belong squarely neither to his native home nor his adopted one—and the intricate yet obdurate language of painting he has created for himself out of necessity.”

Nicky Nodjoumi, The One Who Sees What is Hidden, 2011, Oil on Canvas, 85 x 65 in / 216 x 165 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Chasing the Butterfly, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 96 x 60 in / 243.85 x 152.4 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Intriguing Gesture, 2013, Ink on Paper, 85 x 126 in / 216 x 320 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery. 

Nicky Nodjoumi featured in Asia Society's Iran Modern

September 2013

Nicky Nodjoumi's paintings will be included in the Asia Society's Iran Modern, a landmark exhibition of Iranian art created during the three decades leading up to the revolution of 1979.

With over 100 works on display, on loan for the first time in the U.S, Nicky Nodjoumi's paintings will be shown along with other noteworthy Iranian artists from the 1950s and 1970s.  The exhibition focuses on the development of Iranian Modernism and the global development of modernist art. 

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Nicky Nodjoumi, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 69 in / 111.76 x 175.26 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 69 in / 111.76 x 175.26 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery. 

Via Taymour Grahne Gallery

Beyond Politics, Iranians Share Their Rich Art and Culture

Toronto's Tirgan Festival is the largest of its kind in the world 

Vancouver Pars National Ballet. Courtesy Epoch Times.

by Madalina Hubert, Epoch Times

Legend has it that the land of Iran was expanded into a diverse nation when the Iranian archer Arash shot an arrow to end the dispute between the feuding kingdoms of Iran and Turan.

The understanding was that the place the arrow landed would mark the territory between the two countries.

The arrow flew for a long time—from dawn to noon—and significantly expanded Iran’s boundaries, encompassing in its path different cultures, ethnicities, languages, and traditions.

This legend inspired Tirgan, a traditional festivity honouring diversity, and today this celebration continues with a multi-day Toronto festival called Tirgan (Tir is a reference to arrow in Farsi).

“For thousands of years, Iranians have been celebrating diversity … and Tirgan is a celebration of diversity,” said Behrouz Amouzgar, the festival’s public relations director.

The Tirgan Festival, taking place July 18-21 at the Harbourfront Centre, is the largest celebration of Iranian art and culture in the world. With over 90 events and 150 Canadian and international artists of Iranian descent, the festival features artistic and cultural events of various genres, as well as a food and shopping bazaar.

As a city embracing diversity, Toronto is a good fit for the festival, said Amouzgar. It is also home to an estimated 120,000 Iranians, the largest Iranian community after California.

Initially started in 2006 as a Nowruz (New Year) celebration in March, the festival opened as a summer event in 2008, growing to attract an audience of 120,000 people by 2011. This year, the festival expects 150,000 people, Iranians and non-Iranians alike.

“Iranians are very interested in art and culture, and presenting their art and culture to the world, so that’s one of the main reasons why Tirgan has grown so significantly,” said Amouzgar.

Some of the prominent guests this year include honorary chair Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist, and Dr. Firouz Naderi, the director of the Solar Systems Exploration at NASA.

Discovering Iranian Culture

When people hear about Iran, the first thought that usually comes to mind is its politics rather than its culture, said Amouzgar.

One of the goals of the festival is to change this perception.

“We hope that one day when a non-Iranian hears the term “Iran,” instead of being reminded of politics and policies taken by a government, they get reminded of a particular musical performance, or a performance in dance or visual art,” he said.

“Art and culture is a universal language,” Amouzgar added, noting that in today’s globalized world, it is important to learn about all the different cultures.

“For example, if I don’t know what’s important in your life, what kind of values that you hold dear to you, I’m not going to be able to communicate with you effectively.”

He finds two main aspects that surprise non-Iranians when first encountering the culture. One is its cultural and linguistic diversity, the other is the food.

“Many non-Iranians just presume that Iranian food is awfully spicy. When they come and try Iranian food, they find that it’s actually very delicate, and with a touch of saffron.

“It’s very unique and it only belongs to that region.”

Preserving the Heritage 

In addition to introducing the culture to non-Iranians, the festival also aims to help Iranians preserve their traditions.

“Like many other nations, upon immigration, we are exposed to a new culture, a new society, a new geographic location, and it is quite natural for all of us to change slowly with time,” Amouzgar said.

“In addition to providing this information to non-Iranians, we also want to remind Iranians of their traditional art and culture, to make sure that despite their dislocation and their far distance with their home country, they do not lose touch with the cultural values that made them the beings that they are today.”

Some festival highlights include the opening performance narrating the journey of Arash the Archer; a special concert by rock band Blurred Vision, known for their remake of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”; the Hope Collaboration Project, an art project in which visitors express their hopes for the future; and a cooking workshop by renowned chef Najmieh Batmanglij, “the guru of Persian cooking.”

Most events will be held in English, although the traditional theatrical performances will be held in Farsi. Amouzgar encourages people to visit the website tirgan.ca and plan their visit according to the schedule.

“I highly recommend that they do their research before coming to the site so that they know exactly what performances they are going to attend and watch,” he said.

Those who cannot attend the festival can watch it online at tirgan.ca/live

Border

Iranian photographer breaks down borders to win Royal Academy Rose Award

 Mitra Tabrizian wins praise for an image that captures “the crisis of contemporary culture” in both East and West.

Mitra Tabrizian, ‘The Long Wait’, 2005. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

by Art Radar Asia

On 3 June 2013, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, announced Tehran-born, London-based photographer Mitra Tabrizian as winner of the Rose Award for Photography. The Long Wait brings together ideas of East and West in its exploration of migration, belonging and contemporary culture.  

Mitra Tabrizian’s The Long Wait, from the 2005-2006 series “Border”, was named the winner of the annual Rose Award and awarded a GBP1000 prize. The work will show at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition from 10 June until 18 August 2013 in London.

The Long Wait is a portrait of a female Iranian exile who is anonymous and whose story remains unknown to the public.

Breaking down “Borders” with photography

In an interview with curator Rose Issa cited on the artist’s website, Tabrizian explained that the “Border” series, photographed in London and Tehran, concentrates on “the fantasy” of Iranians in exile. The artist said that the subjects photographed in London present “a sense of displacement, solitude, creating a mise-en-scene which is unsettling”. The photographs shot in Tehran are panoramic views of crowds in what Tabrizian calls “a familiar environment, yet the image still connotes a sense of seclusion, stressing the alienation felt by Iranians today.”

Mitra Tabrizian, ‘Road to Nowhere’, 2005. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

“What links the two projects is hardship and isolation on both sides of the ‘border’”, explains Tabrizian, who has been lauded as “one of the most innovative and visually powerful artists practising in the United Kingdom today” and whose work has been called “radical” by curator Sara Raza.

In an interview with The Guardian, Tabrizian explained that her series could be read “as a breakdown of the barriers of otherness.”

I am not suggesting that the West and East are indistinguishable, or that people from the Middle East lead the same sort of lives wherever they may be – I’m just highlighting the difficulty of deciphering the setting visually.

Since beginning her practice in the eighties, Tabrizian has resisted the title of an “Iranian artist” and prefers the term  “cultural practitioner” with a special interest in, or concern for, Iran.”
 

Mitra Tabrizian, from the series ‘Another Country’, 2010. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

An accidental photographer

A filmmaker as well as a photographer, Tabrizian works between media but maintains a long-term interest in the position of the exile. In an interview for The Observer, writer and critic Rachel Cooke asked Tabrizian how she became interested in photography. “It was almost by accident”, she answered. “I’d always been interested in class divisions in Tehran. I started taking pictures.” Wondering what would become of those photographs, Tabrizian realised that “documentary [film] work might not necessarily be the answer.”

Mitra Tabrizian, from the series ‘Another Country’, 2010. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

Mitra Tabrizian, from the series ‘Another Country’, 2010. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

Mitra Tabrizian, from the series ‘Another Country’, 2010. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

She turned to digital photography and, according to Cooke, created “piercing narratives that remind some critics of film posters.”In 2008, Tabrizian showed a selection of her work in “This is That Place” at Tate Britain. “All of it”, remarks Cooke, “reflects a preoccupation with the great story of our age: migration.”

The recurrent theme, according to the artist, is “the crisis of contemporary culture both in the West and the East”. In conversation with the artist, theorist Homi Bhabha calls Tabrizian’s work “a critique of consumerism and the ethics of commerce and industrial practice. It’s also a critique of the functionalism of that world.”

“Border”, Tabrizian notes, illustrates an “enormous resilience” and a “common will to survive” the “crisis of contemporary culture”. Her subjects “have unfinished business.”


Via Art Radar Asia

Sublunar

Azin Seraj's Unsettling Art Vehemently Criticizes US Sanctions on Iran 

The artist presents a politically pointed exhibition about the effects of American economic policy on the people of her native Iran. 

Azin Seraj, "Infant Formula", Digital Print, Framed, 30" x 20", 2013. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

by Alex Bigman, East Bay Express

Sublunar, Azin Seraj's debut solo exhibition now at Martina } { Johnston Gallery, is one of the more overtly political exhibitions you will find in Berkeley presently. The artist, who holds citizenship in Iran and Canada, presents a vehement counter-narrative to the Obama administration's rhetoric around placing escalating economic sanctions on Iran. At the same time, Seraj sees her work as, above all, "synthesizing personal experiences and meaning" in the contexts in which she operates. Her pieces often drift askew of hard politics toward a more expansive, even mystical aesthetic terrain. The result is illuminating.

Although exhibited in the gallery's back screening room, Sublunar's frontispiece is "Lullaby," a video in which hazy and unsettling imagery — rows of ice cubes dyed to resemble the Iranian flag slowly dripping, plumes of likewise colored smoke curling up into a burnt-orange cloud — accompanies an audio track of Obama triumphantly announcing the tightening of economic sanctions on Iran in condemnation of the country's nuclear program. "We are sending a clear message that we stand with the Iranian people as they seek to exercise their universal rights," he concludes. Text then appears on screen before a moonlit nocturnal scene, effectively replacing the suggestive opacity of the previous visuals with a clear position: the sanctions, although couched by the American president in a rhetoric of humanitarianism, have in fact resulted in serious shortages of food and medicine for Iranians. Obama's waxing on universal rights hence rings with "no validity or justification amongst Iranians across the world."

Rampant inflation is at the fore of the Iranian people's plight, and many of the works in the show address this in one way or another. "Bowl of Patience" is a video featuring interviews with Iranians about their difficulties making ends meet under conditions of unpredictable pricing. In a visual akin to the smoke and melting ice that lend entropic visuals to "Lullaby," here, droplets of water begin to fall upon the image, which is in fact being projected upon a metal bowl. Slowly the vessel fills, submerging and distorting the subjects' faces as their stories repeat. Nearby, Seraj presents a photograph of amply stocked baby formula — a scarce resource in Iran — in an American drug store, where one carton has been wrapped in the Iranian banknotes.

But then there are works that offer no ready-to-hand interpretations: a photograph of the ornately tiled tomb of the Persian poet Hafez, forced partly out of frame by a splendid moon competing for center space; a diptych video of the artist digging a hole in one feed, filling it in the other, placed alongside a vile of dirt from the ancient city of Persepolis. In yet another video, the artist explores her old primary school in Dehkadeh, now abandoned and in disrepair, and aids a trapped bird. These works suggest that Seraj may indeed not be only concerned with making a political statement, but also with reflecting on her own transnational identity, which exists somewhere between Iran and North America — somewhere sublunar, amid the manifold valences of the word.

Sublunar runs through June 30 at Martina } { Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Lullaby", Digital Video, 8:57, 2013. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Ghazal Moon" Digital Print, Framed, 24" x 36", 2010. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Verse Foretold" Digital Print, Framed, 36" x 24", 2010. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Triptych: Bakers", 3 C-Prints, Separately Framed, 18" x 24" Each, 2005. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Triptych: Bazaar Vakil", 3 Digital Prints, Separately Framed, 18" x 24" Each, 2010. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "The Economy of Void", Installation; Shelf with LEDs, Medicine Bottles, 9" x 24" x 4", 2013. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Persepolis", Installation; Shelf with LED, Vial, Dirt from Persepolis, 4" x 6" x 3", 2013. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Azin Seraj, "Whisper My Name", Digital Video, 4:14, 2009. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

Via East Bay Express and Martina } { Johnston Gallery

Untitled 2013

Nasim Nasr on Her Exhibition "Untitled 2013" at Australia's Greenaway Art Gallery

Courtesy The Huffington Post

Interview by James Scarborough, The Huffington Post

Nasim Nasr's artistic practice seeks to diagnose and interpret universal themes that resonate with all viewers, irrespective of cultural heritage. Her statement for her upcoming show at Australia's Greenaway Art Gallery, which includes new video, photographic and three-dimensional works, elaborates on this practice:

The repetitive chant of "I believe in love" manifests a non-denominational universalism in belief, both as announcement and affirmation, of a philosophy of compassion, harmony and goodness in a contemporary world of intolerance and indifference.

The words "I believe in love" symbolically and metaphorically fill the cupped hands, which are then passed over the speaker's face and head, much like in the act of washing or blessing, suggesting the essential nature or soul of the speaker in this universal hope for humanity. Living with and exercising a desire to believe in love can unify all differences.

Her work, however, is more complex and, thus, more interesting than the simple profession of "I believe in love." It has to acknowledge and assimilate cultures with different artistic and value systems, the least of which are her own. She was born in Iran and later immigrated to Australia. In fact, it's the struggle to express universal themes in a polarized world that gives the work its edge, its relevance, and its relentless interest.

Below is an interview with Ms. Nasr that discusses these topics a few weeks before the opening of her exhibition.

JS: What was the biggest challenge being female artist/an artist working in Iran?

NN: There has not been any freedom of expression inside that country as far as I know and that is the most important part of any artist's life. Self-censorship is always the rule of operation. When I exhibited my art as a graduating student it was taken down from the walls--I presented artworks showing women's hair and their nude bodies... there was also the risk of being questioned or challenged by government people about the nature of one's artwork: what it meant or represented and so on.

JS: Why and when did you leave Iran and move to Australia? What were your initial impressions of Australian society and culture? How were they different from the society and culture that you had just left? Is this when you begin work that dealt with issues of self-censorship?

NN: I left Iran 2008 and I arrived in Australia January 2009, having been in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in between. I experienced a culture shock going from Iran to Malaysia, then another, bigger shock arriving in Australia. Australia is a very positive, friendly country that embraces new people but of course language and the Australian usage of it was such a shock. The life of women also was a shock - hearing loud voices, laughing, etc., was something I had never experienced before. For example, women drinking out of a bottle of beer... the most important thing that Australia has given me is being to look at the country I come from now as an outsider.

Being in Australia has allowed me to engage in all artistic and personal issues that I could not in Iran. Following attending art school in Newcastle (New South Wales), I moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where I discovered and felt a freedom to express myself in new ways that were very personal, based on my experiences moving away from Iran.

JS: Emotionally, did your family support your artistic practice?

NN: They have always been very supportive, both financially and emotionally, especially my father with his great knowledge about the world beyond Iran and his perspective on the future of things.

JS: You work in video, photography, performance, and installation. What impact does your multimedia approach have on your subject matter?

NN: The subject matter comes first then the platform for its presentation comes from that, for example the moving, visual, sound qualities of the Persian snap, beshkan, could only be presented really via the medium of video (or film), and the ideas of tradition, region, history etc., were best represented through the samovars that make the installation work "Slow Burn". I think my ideas are best represented through the media of photography and video simply given their conceptual nature.

JS: You write that you want to "interpret universal concerns in contemporary society." Why "universal" concerns and why now? How does this fit in with your Iranian heritage?

NN: I don't want to be limited, shackled by my Iranian heritage. Even if my Iranian heritage is undoubtedly part of me, I am more interested in the universal.

JS: How would you characterize the difference between the cultures of the West and East and of the society that created them?

NN: That's a book to write. And many scholars are still writing them.

JS: To what degree do you believe that there can be a dialogue between Western and Eastern cultures? Do you think art has something significant to say in response to the Arab Spring?

NN: Art probably has a greater capacity to create real dialogue between two differing cultures than politics or similar, and in my experience, having traveled to numerous international biennales and art fairs, this is something both obvious and quite interesting for me. Art can have much to say when it is allowed to do so and of course this is something we can all see currently from developments in the Middle East and North Africa.

JS: Speaking of dialogues, does your work respond to the ancient art of Persia?

NN: Not so much respond to as incorporate cultural/traditional elements of the ancient art of Persia, for example daf (Persian instrument like a tambourine), samovar (Russian/Persian, an ornate, slow tea brewing thing made out of silver/steel etc. very old world and beautiful), and the paisley logo (botteh)

JS: How did you develop your stated themes of cultural identity, especially that of women's rights?

NN: I believe identity can be a transient invention--when one person moves from one culture to another. Most interestingly for me when I used to be in Iran with all its restrictions, I drew nude bodies (in private). However, when I came to Australia I started to look at 'freedom' differently and, with my initial practice, I began photographing covered up women at a nude beach! I also began to think about this issue of (individual and) women's rights--perhaps that in the West, and Australia, that people either took them for granted (in comparison to other countries), or expected them, that perhaps they didn't know how well off they were while aggressively demanding those rights. It's a complex issue and I am in this position where I have the experience of both repression and 'freedom'.

JS: If there were one continuous thread in your work, what would it be?

NN: The complexities of all contemporary issues between East and West, because I am from one and now in the other, much like many other people, and less so artists. This both informs my life and my thinking, and, ultimately, the reasoning and creation of my artwork. Interestingly, what one might see from my work, from close-up, from afar, given my background of repression and restriction and now being in an environment totally the opposite, is that my work presents the human body, or the person in my work, still being 'covered', there are no faces, just hands, just voices or sounds made by them, no faces, no obvious 'identity' as such... this is not a form of (still) self-censorship, just simply the desire to present an escaping of identity.

JS: You write that identity is "transient"? What "identity" do you mean: social, political, economic, or cultural? And why or how is it "transient"?

NN: Social, political, economic, cultural--all of them. You completely have a rebirth, a new start in a new country when you are committed to staying there and leaving the other.

JS: How did you conceive of the exhibition? Is it a continuation of prior projects?

NN: The exhibition at Greenaway Art Gallery in Adelaide is the result of an invitation from director Paul Greenaway. He presented my video works ("Beshkan" and "What to do?") at Art Stage Singapore in January this year and it was very successful. I am showing new video, photographic and three dimensional works that continue recent projects, both extending those ideas while presenting new formats--traditional cultural objects such as daf and samovars, which become physical platforms for this presentation.

JS: To speculate, what would be the reception of the same work were it to be shown at a similar venue in Iran?

NN: Quite probably these works would not be shown at all. So hypothetically if they were shown it might pose problems for the artist and the gallery from the authorities. Now it would be very hard to say what the public/art response might be.

The exhibition runs from July 3 - 28, 2013.

Still shot from “Untitled 2013” video.

Photos courtesy of the artist and The Huffington Post.

Via  The Huffington Post