In from the cold: Iran x Cuba – review

Playful seriousness abounds in this exhibition at New York’s Rogue Space gallery

Old furniture, recycled clothes, found objects, fiber stuffing (machine and hand-stitched), 222x116x118 cm. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and  the Guardian.

by Dan Geist for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

Holy Cow. The title of Allahyar Najafi’s painting captures the playful seriousness that abounds in IRAN X CUBA: Beyond the Headline. The show features work by 19 artists from two countries whose revolutions denied them the tender affections of a certain global hegemon for decades on end; now, as if love might actually trump hate in time, they have come together at New York’s Rogue Space gallery.

In Najafi’s piece, the titular bovine, sacred not only in Hinduism – the artist resided in India for several years – but in Iran’s own Zoroastrianism, weeps amid an array of other hallowed beasts. Through the ether swim a pod of Caspian seals, seemingly a personal totem for the artist, who now lives in Rasht, not far from the sea (one takes center stage in Pusa Caspica, after the animal’s Latin name). From a crook in the cow’s form stares a bald eagle, once-secular American iconography now as sanctified as the almighty dollar.

Like the two other paintings by Najafi on view, it’s a menagerie of both subject and media – thick oils encompass a flock of lenticular images, the multilayered graphics that appear to shift along with one’s viewing angle; the primary visual effect Najafi employs is stereoscopic (“two and a half dimensional,” in his nice description). Some lenticulars, of small human faces and abstract forms, peek out from the plastic sheet below the paint, while others may have been added later. There is much for the mind to play with in this work, both in meaning and in process.

You and Me

“Has a people on the march ever melted away? Tell me where. And how.”

–Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love

Nicky Nodjoumi, Invasive Personality, 2015. Oil on canvas. 65 × 85 inches. Courtesy the artist, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York and the Brooklyn Rail.

by Yasaman Alipour, The Brooklyn Rail

Nicky Nodjoumi’s exhibition, You and Me, fills two floors of the Taymour Grahne Gallery. The show is made up of his familiar large paintings and a group of sketches that, taken together, represent a new iteration of old thoughts. Inside the anti-iconic culture of his native Iran, Nodjoumi’s practice is daring and bold because of his figurative approach; abroad, he is recognized as the Iranian counterpart of contemporary artists contemplating Social Realism. Whether it is read through Iran’s complex history or from a global humanistic perspective, Nodjoumi’s work evokes the abyss of modern socio-politics.

The artist is famous for his monumental political allegories. In the ten large panels presented here, men are placed next to and in contrast with wild animals amid the surreal ruins of modern societies. Nodjoumi’s canvases become stages; the men study, obey, mimic, and ultimately become the animals. It’s an absurd game of power that the men join without objection. Willingly, slowly, they lose their identity.

In comparison to peers like Neo Rauch and the Kabakovs, Nodjoumi’s symbolism is simple—suited men refer to power, female nudes to desire—and his technique seemingly naïve—cartoonish and, at points, happily flawed. Nonetheless, these artists share a common background; they were all born within, failed by, and have moved beyond Social Realism.

Interview with Bijan Daneshmand

The London based, Iranian Bijan Daneshmand tells art journalist and writer Lisa Pollman about his work and how it's inspired by Persian architecture and mathematical principles.

Bijan Daneshmand, Rood, 2016, Oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm. Courtesy the artist and Janet Rady Fine Art.

by Lisa Pollman, JRFA

At one time, you worked as a Civil Engineer. Does your education and training in this specific occupation have an impact on your work? How?

From my teen years on, I enjoyed drawing and had an interest in structures and buildings - both in terms of how they were built and their aesthetics. I chose Civil Engineering as a degree at Kings College London.

I was inspired by Mondrian and the De Stijl Movement, and later by Frank Stella and Agnes Martin. In particular, I was inspired by the grid type patterns, hard edge finish and solid areas of paint. Rather than say the education or my occupation impacted my work, I would say that I entered an occupation and pursued work that I found interesting and aesthetically engaging. Many years later, I pursued a MA in Fine Art at Chelsea mainly to find direction in my practice.

Explain your interest in Persian architecture. Are there any particular facades that you admire? Which ones?

I have a special feeling for the architecture of my country in both the larger cities of Isfahan, Yazd and Kashan as well as the smaller towns and villages such as Natanz, Nishapur, Gonbad, and Abyaneh. Throughout Iran we have creative and intricate buildings: garden houses, tea houses, private houses, government buildings, palaces and mosques that date from the Persepolis (6th century BC) to later works in the 13th and 14th centuries. More recent works from the Qajar and Pahlavi eras are also of interest.

Persian architecture displays strength in structure and aesthetics. I would say the most notable areas of inventiveness and originality are in our arches, vaults and domes and further demonstrated through the use of ghanats (groundwater systems) and wind towers for cooling. Some argue that the greatest Persian artform has been our architecture and represents the highest and truest expression of our civilisation. I would add poetry to that.

“Where We Are Standing”

3 contemporary Iranian women artists at Edward Hopper House Art Center

Exhibition takes an intimate look at artists’ “diasporic biographies” through the complexities of Iran’s socio-political milieu. 

“Where We Are Standing: Contemporary Women Artists from Iran” brings together works from 3 artists born before the Iranian Revolution and currently residing in North America.

Golnar Adili, ‘The King-Seat of My Eye is the Place of Repose for Your Imagination’, 2010, two photographs hand-cut and interlaced, 20 x 30 in. Image courtesy the artist and Art Radar. 

by Lisa Pollman, Art Radar

“Where We Are Standing: Contemporary Women Artists from Iran” at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in New York State runs until 24 April 2016. The show is curated by the Centre’s Artistic Director Carole Perry and features Iranian diaspora artists Golnar Adili, Roya Farassat and Shabnam K. Ghazi. The exhibition was a result of a series of serendipitous events, as Perry told Art Radar:

This exhibition came about because two of the artists (Golnar Adili and Roya Farassat) happened to separately submit exhibition proposals to the Edward Hopper House. I liked both of their work, and had just become familiar with Shabnam Ghazi’s work. It struck me that these three artists together would make a strong and compelling show. They all grew up in Tehran, although they came of age at different times. Their work is not connected, other than the strong influence their upbringing and their subsequent displacement had on their visions.

The Edward Hopper House Art Center is located in Nyack, New York and is the birthplace of American realist painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1882-1967). The building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1971 and according to the organisation’s website, seeks “to encourage and nurture community engagement with the arts”.

Initials B.B.

How the man who signs ‘B.B.’ plans to shake up the contemporary Iranian art scene

Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar – Self-Portrait (detail; from the Invincible series). Courtesy REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

It was one of those afternoons I didn’t ever want to end. All I’d brought with me were a pair of bright blue jeans and snakeskin-print loafers you’d think I’d nicked from the closet of Lady Stardust himself. Before us, the sun was sinking down into the French Riviera, behind its winding hills, into a shining, rippled film flecked with the billowing white masts of what seemed to us on high like a thousand little sailboats. It was all a blur, London and the piss-soaked back alleys of Camden, though the paleness of my reflection in the mirror reminded me of my recent whereabouts. By all accounts, Sassan should have been the happiest of souls there and then, the strapping flaxen-haired lad in the looming shadows cast by two stone Persian lions; but he wasn’t, and still isn’t. His thoughts were far away from the sun, the sea, and those tiny sailboats; he was thinking about his beloved Iran. As was I.

As we sipped on cool rosé and my attention drifted at times towards the subdued strains of the band behind us, Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar told me about his plans to show not only his neighbours in the glitzy Riviera, but the world at large, what he called the ‘real Iran’. The time, he said, pushing back wayward locks of hair, was ripe for new blood in the contemporary Iranian art scene. It was time for change – enough of the tawdry chelo kababi mentality, as I termed it; Sassan would go big, not home. Together with his business savvy and his passion for the arts, he would establish a foundation of his own in support of Iranian artists and play by his own rules. Admittedly, it all sounded rather romantic, and the feeling was in no small way accentuated by the roseate draughts that poured forth from some seemingly endless source. Fortunately, though, we ultimately ended up doing what we said we would on that cool and heady night by the sea; I’ve finally penned that confounded little book of mine, and the doors to the House of Sassan – the Fondation Behnam Bakhtiar – have been swung wide open. That hasn’t calmed either of us down in the slightest, however.

Initially, this conversation was intended to be presented in the form of a podcast. On second thought, fearing that it might degenerate into a heated discussion about the arts between two hot-blooded Iranians, I instead decided to have Sassan explain – as coolly, yet candidly as possible – the premise of his new foundation and what he’s been up to for the past six months or so.

I’m hearing about new Middle East-related arts and cultural foundations so often … they’re popping up like mushrooms! You’ve got ones in the Middle East, Western Europe, North America … Why did you feel the need to establish a new one? What are the foundation’s primary aims and objectives?

Six Artists From Iran at Grey Art Gallery

“Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists From Iran” runs through April 2 at Grey Art Gallery.

“Projectile 10,” by Shahpour Pouyan, part of “Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran,” an exhibition at Grey Art Gallery. Credit Agaton Strom for The New York Times. Courtesy NY Times.

by Holland Cotter, New York Times

Time decides. When an exhibition scheduled for the winter slot at Grey Art Gallery at New York University wasn’t ready, a replacement had to be found, and “Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists From Iran,” set for a future date, was moved forward. If there was a scramble to pull it off, you’d barely know. Organized by the gallery’s director, Lynn Gumpert, the show looks great, thought through, with the improvisatory lift that adrenaline can provide.

One thing that made the switch doable was having some of the art already in hand. In the 1960s, the gallery’s founding patron, Abby Weed Grey (1902-78), traveled to Iran, loved the new art she found there, bought it up and gave it to N.Y.U. As a result, the Grey has the largest holdings anywhere of work by one of the show’s six artists, Parviz Tanavoli, widely considered Iran’s leading modern sculptor, and outstanding examples of paintings by his brilliant but unlucky colleague Faramarz Pilaram.

To these two modernists Ms. Gumpert has added a fascinating figure of a more recent generation, Chohreh Feyzdjou, who died at 40 in 1995. Ms. Feyzdjou hasn’t yet registered on New York’s radar, though she may well do so now. Finally, bringing the show into the present are three young artists — Shiva Ahmadi, Barbad Golshiri and Shahpour Pouyan — born decades and political worlds away from the pre-revolutionary Iran that Ms. Grey knew.

Contemporary art in Iran has always been politically fraught. When Mr. Tanavoli began making sculpture, he had few local models to follow. The tradition of sculpture in Persia had effectively ended in the seventh century with the arrival of iconophobic Islam. Even with sculpture’s return in the secularized 1960s, the question was where to go with it: Should new art be national or international, local or global, in character?

With Iran emerging from a long stretch of Western domination, artists were in the mood to shape a distinctively native aesthetic. At the same time, many of them had visited Europe and wanted to stay at least partly in the global swing. Mr. Tanavoli’s answer to these dual demands was synthesis, and you can see him sorting it out. His 1962 “Figure and Hand” suggests a stack of bazaar-bought pots and pans with a Surrealist overlay. A decade later, in his well-known bronze “Heech,” he seamlessly united three calligraphic characters spelling the Persian word for “nothing” into a single, Brancusi-sleek curve.

Egyptomania, orientalism and modernism

Farhad Ahrarnia at Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai

Lawrie Shabibi presents the first solo exhibition by the Iranian artist in the Middle East.

Running until 14 January 2016, “A Dish Fit for the Gods” features Farhad Ahrarnia’s unique works expressing the ambivalent engagement between West and East through a combination of sculpture, painting, photography and embroidery.

Farhad Ahrarnia, ‘The Delirium of Becoming, a Moment Caught Between Myth and History, No. 1′, 2015, digital print dyed onto cotton fabric, hand embroidered using silk, cotton and metallic thread, and needles, 147.5 x 113 x 2 cm. Image courtesy the artist, Lawrie Shabibi and Art Radar.

byC. A. Xuan Mai Ardia, Art Radar

“A Dish Fit For the Gods” at Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai marks the first time Iranian-born, UK-based artist Farhad Ahrarnia exhibits in the Middle Eastern region.

Ahrarnia’s diverse work typically draws from his upbringing in Iran and engages with inter-cultural cross-pollination and influences, media manipulation of reality and the constant power play between tradition and modernity.

His hometown Shiraz, where he was born in 1971, provides a constant reference and source of inspiration for his artistic practice, which utilises local, traditional techniques and crafts such as embroidery, metalwork and mosaic in combination with contemporary ones such as photography and digital printing on canvas.

On the opposite spectrum lies another major source of inspiration: western modernism. Kazimir Malevich, a key figure of Suprematism, is one of the artist’s major influences, while the modernist architecture that coexists with ancient ruins and historic buildings in Shiraz provides Ahrarnia with a heightened receptivity to and aesthetic sensibility combining East and West, tradition and modernity.

From the West, celebrity icons and images, Hollywood posters, beauty pageants, Time magazine covers or heroic war photography also contributed to animate Ahrarnia’s imaginative work, which juxtaposed such imagery with references to his cultural heritage and that of other areas of the Middle East.

Unfamiliar territory: artists navigate the complexities of the refugee crisis

From Shahpour Pouyan’s creative reappraisal of Persian miniatures to Bissane al Charif’s exploration of the memories of Syrian refugees, artists are using their work to highlight the human dimension of the refugee crisis

Making history … Shahpour Pouyan’s reworking of a 16th-century Persian miniature entitled God Sets the Course for the Ship, and Not the Captain. Photograph: Shahpour Pouyan/Lawrie Shabibi/Copperfield Gallery, courtesy the Guardian.

by Dale Berning Sawa, The Guardian

Earlier this month, as the words “migrant crisis” permeated daily conversation, and migrants became refugees became people fleeing for their lives, the image of a small, ancient ship landed in my inbox. A sailing boat, really, thin wooden masts and white sails rolled up, the hull hovering against a darkened sea. Framed demurely by gold thread and two boxed-out captions, it was a quietly arresting thing. In between stories of fraught Mediterranean crossings and lives lost in terrifying circumstances, it lodged itself in my mind.

This diminutive work is one of a series of revisited Persian miniatures that the Iranian artist Shahpour Pouyan is currently showing at London’s Copperfield Gallery in an exhibition entitled History Travels at Different Speeds. Of the 16 miniatures in the show, the boat – entitled God Sets the Course for the Ship and Not the Captain – is the one that stops you in your tracks. Pouyan sees a bleak metaphor for the refugees’ plight in the piece’s colours. “Silver was used to paint water,” he says. “But the destiny of silver is to oxidise, to blacken. People are putting their lives into the hands of traffickers, who put the boats on autopilot and jump ship. The ships travel west with no captain or crew, but packed full of believers, literally entrusting their destiny to God.”

Art Doc of the Week: Fifi Howls from Happiness

The late Iranian artist Bahman Mohassess didn’t care about offering succor or touchy-feely platitudes to anyone. That was part of his greatness.

Bahman Mohassess, Requiem Omnibus (Death of Martin Luther King) Piper, 1968, Mixed Media on Canvas, 100×150 cm. Courtesy CraveOnline.

by Ernest Hardy, CraveOnline

We’ve become so inundated with insipid TED-talk presentations (and by speakers who’ve taken their presentation cues from that template even when not speaking at actual TED events) that conversations on art and politics, particularly where the two intersect, have become exercises in facile uplift and affirmation. Artists who traffic in grittier, darker, more nuanced work or perspectives, those who don’t think the role of art is to be sure the consumer (because that’s what we’re reduced to in those settings) leaves the experience feeling good about themselves are hamstrung by current dictates on the roles and responsibilities of the artist.

What makes Mitra Farahani’s documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness so refreshing (on top of being simply a fantastic documentary) is that the film’s subject, the great, under-recognized Iranian visual artist Bahman Mohasses, truly does not give a fuck about offering succor or touchy-feely platitudes to anyone. He’s gruff, biting, cynical and utterly without faith in humanity. He’s also wickedly funny in his raspy garrulousness. His work – paintings, sculptures, theater design – was tough-minded, beautiful, and confrontational. It challenged those in power, but also took citizenry to task for their complacency, their “boot-licking” when resistance is what is called for.

Having fled Iran after the American-backed coup of 1953 overthrew the democratically elected government, the openly gay Mohasses settled in Italy. (His comments on contemporary gay culture are absolutely withering.) He’d return home some years later and start to divide his time between his birthplace and his second home. Eventually, disgusted by what has become of Iran, he returned to Italy permanently. By the time Farahani finds and films him in 2010, when he’s nearly eighty, few people outside art students and the most well-versed art collectors even know his name anymore, and most of them assume he is dead.

Numinous

Yari Ostovany at Stanford Art Spaces

Chelleneshin #21, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches. Courtesy The Huffington Post.

Interview by John Seed, The Huffington Post

The paintings of Yari Ostovany, now on view at Stanford University's Paul G. Allen building, are stylistically related to works by second-generation American Abstract Expressionists -- for example Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski -- but as curator DeWitt Cheng notes, they also are inspired by and refer to the artist's Iranian cultural background. For example, the title of Ostovany's painting Chelleneshin refers to a period of solitude:

Chelleneshin is a compound word in Persian consisting of the words Chelleh; which describes a period of forty days; and Neshin, which literally means sitting. It refers to a seeker going into solitude for a period of forty days and forty nights to pray and meditate. In several mystical traditions, The Cycle of Forty is a common duration needed for spiritual metamorphosis and transitions to another, transcendent dimension.

Ostovany's interest in and ability to reference culture strikes DeWitt Cheng, who organized the exhibition, as admirable:

"I find his seriousness about spirituality and his cultural heritage interesting and inspiring. I wish that more artists today took it upon themselves to attain a modicum of cultural literacy both inside and outside of their disciplines/professions. And Yari makes beautiful, gutsy paintings too."

I recently interviewed Yari Ostovany and asked him both about his background and his art.

What can you tell me about growing up in Iran? Were you always artistic?

My father's love of music (both western classical and Persian classical music) meant that music was always filing the air in our house when I was growing up.

My first love was poetry, modern Persian poetry to be precise. When I was 14 a friend of mine who had started taking painting classes encouraged me to do so as well saying that she thought it wold suit my temperament perfectly.

My first art class was a Tehran University extension class while I was still in high school (my sophomore year). I was hooked. Gallery hoping in Tehran became my favorite pastime and the newly built Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art my hangout.

Art and Protest

Sheida Soleimani, “Lachrymatory Agent” (2014). Archival Pigment Print, 24 × 17 ̋.  Courtesy The Brooklyn Rail.

by Matthew Biro, The Brooklyn Rail

Can art today be a form of protest? And, if so, what subjects, what issues, what transgressions or injustices, does it most vitally and persuasively critique? In many ways, the obvious answer to this question is “yes.” As critics and historians remind us, many of the founding acts of modern art were based in the criticism and negation of the status quo, as artists and writers attacked conventional ways of seeing, doing, being, and understanding the world. And even after the rise of postmodernism, with its rejection of so many of high modernism’s primary ideals or values, modern art’s foundation in negation remained a bedrock for the continuing production and understanding of contemporary art.

At the same time, in today’s art world, many forms of critique seem worn out and hollow. Mega-artists like Christopher Wool and Jeff Koons appear to criticize the commodification of experience, the ways in which we as individuals begin to think, feel, and dream in stereotypes. Their works, according to their proponents, can easily be read as protests against the growth of hierarchy, inequality, commodification, and the spectacle. Despite this, however, their irony and attacks on artistic subjectivity create ambiguity and distance the spectator in ways that equally affirm both left- and right-wing ideals. At their core, the artworks of Koons and Wool suggest that all values are relative, and they support even the most extreme capitalist, free-market ideologies. Protest can perhaps still be genuine and viable in art today, but it can also clearly function as an attitude or pose, just another way of doing business.

For this reason, the question that I directed at different writers and artists in mid-April was, “Can art still be critical?” Their generous responses prove that it can be; although, to be sure, criticism can also be a clichéd attitude, espoused by even the most conservative artists. The separation of critique from affirmation, we are shown, always lies in the details, in the presence—or lack—of a significant crossing of content with form. Protest, we discover, arises from the tensed interaction of a certain imagination with a specific here and now, or in the unconventional conjunction of real historical events with particular techniques and strategies. And although it takes a variety of forms in art today, the presence of protest needs to be noted; for if art eschews criticism, it runs the danger of becoming mere entertainment, just another commodity that supports the status quo.

There are many ways to keep protest alive in art today. Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of following a number of artists under 30, whose works powerfully and convincingly embrace the task of critique. Their examples provide me with a sense that art can still be critical; and furthermore they suggest that dissent is once again changing, that it is becoming less cool and didactic. Instead, as these newcomers demonstrate, critique and social activism in art today are messier, more material and ambiguous, and increasingly imaginary and fantastic. A different sensibility, a kind of “libidinal politics,” seems to be growing, an attitude that blends political critique with reflection on the media and the body.

American born Sheida Soleimani makes photographs of an Iran she has never visited in person. The child of refugees who fled persecution in the Islamic Republic, she updates the strategy of photomontage, creating broken representations of a country where violence intermixes with desire. To make her photographs, Soleimani prints out images sourced from the Internet—politicians, religious figures, soldiers, prisoners, executioners, and ordinary people, as well as oriental rugs and other patterned forms—that she then combines with three-dimensional objects. The resulting dioramas, in which appropriated images are mixed with raw and processed foods, toys, pebbles, plants, hair, leaves, wigs, sugar cubes, and fabrics, are carefully lit and then re-photographed with a high resolution medium format digital camera. And the images that result, whose constituent parts signify Iran in a variety of different ways, suggest twisted propaganda posters or surreal product displays.

Gimme Some Truth

Living the high life and telling it like it is: Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar

Once Upon a Time, There Was Saddam (from the A Reason to Fight series). Courtesy REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT  

What interest could a stylish, twenty-something artist-cum-businessman living it up in the French Riviera and Monaco have in a tiny village in central Iran? In a tribe supposed to be as old as time itself? In a war he never experienced, fought for, or at the time understood? Quite a bit, apparently.

Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, in the early 80s, Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar has a lot to be happy about. Despite having been dubbed the ‘new kid on the block’ (among other things) by some, he has, in a very short time, seen his work shown in solo exhibitions in London, major charity galas, international art fairs, and on prestigious online platforms; not bad at all, one could well say. Although he comes from a business background and is known for his entrepreneurial flair and drive, it isn’t money that’s driving Sassan’s artistic practice, but rather a simple love for his homeland, and a journey through the many facets of his identity. Combining traditional Persian motifs with black-and-white photography, fashion aesthetics, and archival material, Sassan strives to reveal through his work not only his own true self, but also that of Iran.

Who is Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar? What does he believe in? Who is this ‘man on a mission’ everyone’s been talking about recently?

I have often been called a self-styled purveyor of the truth by different major organisations and players in the contemporary art world during the past two years, which is due to the nature of my work – from my portraiture and art films, to installations and photographs such as those of the A Reason to Fight and The Real Me series – as well as my background. As an artist, one of my objectives is to show the world what the true nature of my country – Iran – and its culture, heritage, and people is. It has been too long that the majority of international media outlets have portrayed my fellow nationals, country, and heritage as something that is clearly false, and I think it is long overdue to start showing the truth and factual realities of Iran instead of all this negative propaganda circulating everywhere.

Today, I am using my practice to better educate the masses on a global level about Iran and everything that it involves, and my biggest satisfaction is when I see audiences of various ages and races understanding the message behind my work all in the same way. My work deals with a potent blend of nostalgia, history, and national cultural identity.

I won’t wait for grey hairs and worldly cares to soften my views

Rokni Haerizadeh, Ramin Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at Callicoon Fine Arts | April 12 – May 31, 2015

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian, I won't wait for grey hairs and worldly cares to soften my views (2015), Callicoon Fine Arts. Installation shot. Courtesy of Callicoon Fine Arts and The Brooklyn Rail.

by Sara Roffino, The Brooklyn Rail

Iranian, Dubai-based artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian’s first show in New York, I won’t wait for grey hairs and worldly cares to soften my views is a vociferous installation spanning a multitude of genres, places, times, and languages. Several visits are not enough to digest all that is present in this exhibition, which includes works made by the three men individually, as well as collaborative pieces, and works by other artists—Etel Adnan, Martha Wilson, and A.K. Burns, for example. It’s not possible in this short review to cover even a fraction of what is happening here. In fact, that inability to process it all is itself a significant element of the work. Nonetheless, spending time in this exhibition is revelatory. It is an opportunity to enter the world of the Haerizadeh brothers and their childhood friend Rahmanian—a world that is sharply and critically observant of cultural, political, and personal states of being without succumbing to the darker realities of each.

Sculptures, videos, collages, paintings, and assemblages are installed atop a floor painted with a winding black-and-white triangular pattern, pink amaryllis flowers, and erratic splotches of yellow. On three screens immediately to the left of the entrance, the video “O, You People!” (2014) runs on a loop. Filmed in 2013 while the artists were at the Rauschenberg Foundation’s residency on Captiva Island, “O, You People!” presents footage of the Haerizadehs and Rahmanian exploring and interacting with an oceanfront house on stilts. Against low contrast grey-blue light, the artists dressed in costumes, draped themselves in sheets, and wore animal masks to film each other from 4 a.m. until sunrise for two weeks. Installed just above the floor, the videos require viewers to kneel down to view the screens properly. The audio is a Farsi to English and then back to Farsi translation of the poem “O, You People” by Nima Yushij, the father of modern Persian poetry. Despite its unassuming placement within the gallery, and the nearly inaudible audio, “O, You People” is integral—perhaps even the anchor of the show.

Through placing themselves within the installation as such, the Haerizadehs and Rahmanian insist on their presence within the work. Their individual biographies—the personal experiences of culture, modernity, art, oppression, and freedom within Iran (and beyond)—serve as material in much the same way as do dollar-store underwear, plastic carrots, family photos, Pussy Riot, Cindy Sherman, Renaissance putti, and the British Royal family (to name just a few of the dozens of references in the show).

At LA Museum, A Powerful And Provocative Look At 'Islamic Art Now'

If you called Andy Warhol a Christian artist would that make sense?
- Professor Ali Behdad

Amir Mousavi's 2011 work Untited, #8, from the series Lost in Wonderland. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art and NPR.

by Susan Stamberg, NPR

Art galleries are generally quiet, hushed spaces, but at the Los Angeles County Museum a show called Islamic Art Now is sparking some heated discussions as visitors ponder the photographs, paintings and neon sculptures on display.

Moroccan photographer Lalla Essaydi has covered every inch of a reclining odalisque with graceful Arabic calligraphy. The gorgeous woman is staring right at us, and viewers wonder: Is the writing protection? A shield? Imprisonment?

Translating the calligraphy, curator Linda Komaroff doesn't see it that way. "I see it more as: This is who I am. See me for who I am. Read me if you like, but this is me," she says.

Egyptian-German artist Susan Hefuna's Woman Behind Mashrabiya I is a black and white image of a shrouded woman looking out from behind a pierced screen. We can't really see her, but she can see us. Is she protected? Trapped?

"It's very mysterious — and deliberately so," Komaroff says. "It's this notion about: Do we really understand? ... To me, a lot of these images are a challenge to an American audience to maybe rethink what their perceptions are of women in the Middle East, women in the Islamic world. Maybe they're not that different from us after all."

Some provocative images may feel very different from Western experience. Viewers get an extreme close-up in Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's 1996 photograph Speechless. We see a portion of a woman's face, circled by a black headscarf. At her right ear, what looks at first like a clunky earring turns out to be the barrel of a gun. With a look of determination, she's pointing the gun directly at the viewer.

Rorschach Inkblots Conjure Up Themes of Violence and Loss in Iran

From Chaos, A Mind of Its Own series, by Roya Farassat. Courtesy Shirin Art Gallery, New York.

by Negar Mortazavi, Hyperallergic

It’s not so easy for Iranian-American artists to portray their hyphenated identities. The two countries have spent the past three decades as staunch enemies, disconnected from each other. Now the US and Iran have recently started talking to each other, trying to resolve a nuclear dispute. That might seem like a purely political issue but it has had its effects on the art scene.

With Iran news dominating the headlines, the Americans have become curious about the people who live in Iran. And art, naturally, is one great way to learn about a people. Iranian art has generated new interest and many artists have been showcased across the US over the past two years, from legendary sculptor Parviz Tanavoli at Boston’s Davis Museum to Tehran-based artist Monir Shahroudy at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Iran-born, New York-based artist Roya Farassat is a new addition to this list. Her work was recently included in an exhibition that travelled from the Queens Museum to the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Virginia, and her paintings of women in veils and welded steel wall installations have been shown in numerous solo and group shows across the US and abroad, including art fairs in New York, Miami, Dubai, and Kuwait. Her current solo exhibit Chaos, A Mind of Its Own at Shirin Gallery in New York features paintings inspired by Rorschach inkblots. Made with an instinctive love for detail and symmetry, Farassat’s works on paper reveal multiple layers of paint, building up to rich surfaces that transform into something haunting and turbulent. Initially, what seems to look like an accidental spill matures to a ghostlike explosion that rises like smoke and leaves debris of delicate stains, linear lines, and thickened shadows.

Focusing attention on hidden realities

Art and performance project "The Forgotten"

Once upon a time in a land far away, there existed a storytelling tradition known as "naghali". Iranian artist Golnar Tabibzadeh was inspired by this tradition to combine art and storytelling for her project "The Forgotten", which tells some of the heart-rending personal stories behind the daily news.

Breaking with media constructs and traditional conventions: the stories told in "The Forgotten" are set in today's world. These modern tales have roots documenting current realities. In this way, the project tries to show that heroes and villains, good and evil aren't as clear-cut in the real world as they are in fairy tales. And yet there are people whose struggles in life and whose ultimate survival are much more heroic than anything we could imagine. Courtesy Qantara.

by Marian Brehmer, Qantara

 

Young Samir loved telling stories. A good story let him pretend to be one of his favourite characters. He liked playing within the high walls of the ancient citadel in his hometown of Aleppo, imagining himself to be a hero in his castle, until one day missiles struck his home and his mother ran out onto the street, her dress on fire. That was the day he stopped talking.

The audience has gone absolutely silent. The speaker, dressed all in black, recounts Samir's fate in a loud, accentuated voice. Then an Arabic melody wafts out of the darkness. First softly, then growing louder and louder, until an emphatic voice dominates the entire theatre.

Like a woman wailing in grief, the Syrian soprano Dima Orsho sings her heart out. The music and narration are supported by five artworks that stand side by side on the stage. All of the characters in the stories being told are depicted on the canvases in vibrant colours.

If we didn't know how dramatic these stories were, Golnar Tabibzadeh's pictures might make an almost cheerful impression. The brightly coloured and loosely painted motifs, which sensitively illustrate the tales being related, look like fairy-tale images. The author of the piece, entitled "The Forgotten", which was performed at the Morgenland Festival Osnabruck 2014, is a spirited and lively young artist. But when she tells of the intention behind her project, Golnar Tabibzadeh is very serious indeed.

Everything and Nothing: A Meeting with Parviz Tanavoli in Tehran

Poet of Persia

Parviz Tanavoli as a student at Tehran’s Honarestan-e Honar-haye Ziba in 1953, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrerra, Italy, in 1957. Courtesy Maryam Eisler and Shiva Balaghi respectively, and REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT 

After taking a final swig of doogh, haphazardly gathering my sundry belongings into my weathered canvas satchel, and kissing my friend three times on the cheeks, I rush down a rickety flight of stairs to a picturesque summer scene in Deh-e Vanak, a sleepy hamlet but a short drive from the mania of Tehran’s Vanak Square. Brushing shoulders with a covey of weary-eyed mechanics, their gasoline-smeared faces wisened by the beating sun and heartache in equal amounts, and traversing the pothole-laden thoroughfare with a characteristically Western trepidation, I struggle to find my taxi driver amongst the scores of moribund Peykans and sooty Peugeot 206s. By a stroke of ill luck, the traffic today is unusually awful, and I’m already half-an-hour late for another get-together with an artist. This artist, however, is somewhat different from the others I know, whom I usually meet in the tawny-hued lobby of the Hotel Homa – or rather, the ‘Old Sheraton’, as those from the pre-Revolution days are wont to call it – or in the frieze of cozy coffee shops clustered together in the Sayeh Tower opposite the Mellat Park. He’s somewhat of a legend, venerated both abroad and at home: a reality that comes as a welcome surprise in a nation whose artists usually enjoy iconic status posthumously. I had spoken to him at length over the phone towards the end of his winter ‘migration’ in Vancouver a few months ago, and he’s certainly no stranger, although I’ve yet to meet him in person. The stifling heat is certainly not making the situation any more relaxing, and, as I finally manage to furl myself in the backseat of the tiny Peugeot, I feel a tepid patch of sweat underneath my arms. ‘Agha,’ I say with diffidence, ‘can you please turn on the cooler?’. He casts a sidelong glance in the rearview mirror, flicks a switch, and we head for the dusty foothills of the Alborz mountains.

As soon as we find our way onto the highway, we hit a gridlock. While the synth-soaked sounds of a maudlin pop song set to the proverbial 6/8 rhythm continue to emanate from the car radio and we find ourselves in a midday jam, the driver decides to while away the time by striking up conversation. ‘What do you do?’ he asks. Not having the patience to get into any details, I provide a desultory response. ‘I’m in the arts business’. ‘Ah, are you a singer? A wedding singer?’ comes the reply. For God’s sake, move! I shout in vain in the recesses of my mind, looking ahead worriedly at the swarm of white and grey cars embellished with religious slogans and Zoroastrian icons. To add to the drama, the artist in question isn’t picking up either of his telephones, and I wonder whether he’ll be in his studio at all by the time we finally reach it.

Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's mirror sculptures dazzle during Prospect.3

Monir Farmanfarmaian has created work over the past fifty years that reflects the dichotomous nature of her two homes: Iran and New York City, and the dualities of her successes and devastations (during Iran’s Islamic Revolution in the 1970s, most of her work was confiscated or destroyed). Her sculptural mosaics, featured here, marry traditional Persian design motifs with elements of Western modernism, combining mirrored pieces and reverse painting on glass in striking geometric frameworks. The glass and mirrors she uses put the world’s reflection front and center, but their arrangements also explore potentially mathematical concepts of infinity, bursting with an internal light that enhances their own physicality.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Porto 24.

by Doug MacCash, The Times-Picayune on NOLA.com

Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's sculptures at the Newcomb Art Gallery during New Orleans' international art festival, Prospect.3, are like giant gemstones. She creates abstract geometric shapes based on traditional Persian architecture, then encrusts them with reflective mosaics made from thousands of small, precisely cut mirror fragments. On one hand her sculptures have the cool cerebral quality of minimalism, but their glimmering surfaces lend them an irresistible gaiety as well.

Born in 1924, Farmanfarmaian has seen a lot of history go by. According to Internet references, World War II prevented her from traveling to Paris to study art as she had hoped, so she attended art schools in New York during the advent of the abstract expressionist movement, becoming friends with avant-garde stars such as Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock and eventually Andy Warhol. By 1958 she was a star herself, representing Iran in the Venice Biennale, the international art event that is the model for Prospect.3. Her career flourished in Iran until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when much of her work was destroyed and she returned to New York.

Mirrored geometric sculptures by Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian (L: Instagram photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune; R: Courtesy Newcomb Art Gallery)

Sex, Drugs, and Gol-o-Bolbol

‘If Iran ever had a rock and roll dynasty, it belonged to the Qajars’

A Qajar belle given the Warhol treatment by Hojat Amani. Courtesy REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

It’s a stiflingly hot and humid morning in New York City. Though I probably shouldn’t, I pour myself another dose of crimson Persian chai in a kamar-barik teacup amidst a din of blaring sirens, whiny horns, scratchy radios, and Manhattan chatter steaming forth from the dirty boulevard below. I’ve got fuzzed-out riffs bouncing about in my head, and am picturing myself sauntering down St. Mark’s Place later in the afternoon before ambling into the seedy corner bar, just like Mick and Keith in Waiting on a Friend. Happily daydreaming whilst timidly sipping my tea, lest I scald my tongue, my cousin and I decide to while away the time by browsing through a mishmash of old, yellowed photo albums, lavishly-illustrated books about Iran, and some artefacts unearthed from her dusty closet of curios. My eyes glance over the panoply of pictures, ceramics, folios, and metalwork arrayed before me, none of which particularly pique my interest; I’m 16, and all I want to do is fall in love, start a rock and roll band, and bury my high school days in the dust. Khayyam? Ferdowsi? Give me the New York Dolls any day.

Just as we’re about to head out to bite the Big Apple, my cousin remembers an old oil painting tucked away somewhere she thinks I’d find interesting. As she blows away the dust accumulated over many moons from its ornate frame, my pupils dilate, and I feel the hair on my legs stand erect; I am, after all, face-to-face with the Pivot of the Universe, God’s Shadow on Earth, the King of Kings, Fat’h Ali Shah-e Qajar, in all his bejeweled and bearded glory. Though I can’t tell my Pahlavi from my Safavi, and have scarce turned a page in the annals of Iranian history, I find something alluring about this figure nonetheless. His look is sinister and haughty, his countenance overbearing and imposing; and, eyeing this hirsute sovereign (Billy Gibbons, go home) with one blessed palm resting on the hilt of a glittering dagger, and the other clutching the tortuous pipe of a gaudy ghalyan, the words on Keith Richards’ now-iconic 70s t-shirt resonate as true as ever: who the fuck is Mick Jagger?

Iran native eyes Schenectady café as venue for conversation

Dr. Mahmood Karimi Hakak, stands in front of 703 Union Street in Schenectady Wednesday, November 5, 2014.   Photographer: Peter R. Barber. Courtesy Gazette.

by Bethany Bump, Gazette Reporter

Fifteen years ago, Iranian officials raided Mahmood Karimi-Hakak’s sold-out production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and shut it down.

The Islamic regime in power at the time had been sending censors to observe Karimi-Hakak’s take on one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and they objected to a scene in which an actor made a pushing gesture toward an actress from 10 inches away. Men and women were forbidden from touching on stage, and from a certain angle an audience member might think the actors had touched, the officials told him. Karimi-Hakak increased the distance.

But on the fifth night of sold-out performances, officials raided the show, shouting violent threats and calling the women on stage whores. With hundreds of people in the audience, Karimi-Hakak urged the raiders to sit down with him on stage and discuss their concerns with the audience. If the audience believed them valid, he would happily shut down, he said.

“I said, ‘Look, theater is an art based on dialogue; therefore, stage is the most appropriate place for opposing forces to sit down and have a conversation,’ ” the Niskayuna resident and Siena College professor recalled 15 years later. “Of course, they did not do it, because they knew if there was a dialogue, they’d have no legs to stand on.”

Now, Karimi-Hakak has a new plan to foster dialogue, right here in Schenectady. He’s asking the city for approval to open a café at 703 Union St., a two-story building across from Union College, to host film screenings, poetry readings, arts and crafts exhibits and plain old conversation.

Café International would offer coffee, pastries, Persian teas and sweets. With some minimal renovations and city Planning Commission approval later this month, it could open by March, right in time for the Persian New Year.

“I want to gather people under the same roof for tea and conversation,” Karimi-Hakak said. “All kinds of people: academics, artists, students, people from all walks of life. As a theater artist, I sincerely believe that the only way to survival as human beings is to have conversations with one another to understand that we can live in this world together and we don’t have to think the same way to do it.”