Mehdi Farhadian

Opening on 21st July 2023
On view until 11th August 2023

Artists:
Mehdi Farhadian, Nasim Davari, Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard, Koosha Moossavi, Maryam Farshad, Shaqayeq Ahmadian, Hamed Sahihi, Sara Tavana, Shahryar Gharaei, Maryam Farzadian, Marjian Hoshiar, Sanahin Babajanians, Sara Assareh, Shahrzad Argahinejad, Siamak Nasr, Leila Nouraei

The exhibition aims to bring together a divergent set of works. Representing, but also upsetting, the relationship between the artists and their connection to reality. Spheres that contain paradoxes and manage to juxtapose the ideal with the unattainable.
Breaking away from the harsh realities is a Persian Tradition manifested in our literature and arts, even in our timeless tradition of humor. The tough realism of every day is compensated by stepping into another dimension, cherishing illusions that replace the real world.
Here are exaggerated floating spaces – a placeless place- yet in connection with the spaces that remain outside them. Within these spaces, we are alive, free of borders and restrictions, away from the mundane, and separated from the gloom that engulfs our land. Able to float in an archipelago of plurality, as we are supposed to.
Nazila Noebashari

Opening on 24th February 2023
On View until 17th March 2023

Artists:
Farhad Ahrarnia, Shaqayeq Ahmadian, Sara Assareh, Samira Eskandarfar, Mohamad Eskandari, Ebrahim Eskandari, Reihaneh Afzalian, Sanahin Babajanians, Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard, Dadbeh Bassir,Parisa Taghipour, Sara Tavana, Manijeh Hejazi, Parisa Hejazi, Sara Hosseini, Zari Hosseini, Hamid Hemayatian, Anahita Darabbeigi, Nasim Davari, Raoof Dashti, Navid Salajegheh, Sara Soleimani Qashqayi,Amir Hossein Shahnazi, Hamed Sahihi, Nastaran Safaei, Bahar Samadi, Kiarang Alaei, Maryam Farzadian, Mayram Farshad, Mehdi Farhadian, Naghmeh Ghassemlou, Amirali Ghasemi, Narges Mohamadian, Shirin Mellatgohar,Koosha Moossavi, Parsoua Mahtash, Elmira Mirmiran, Allahyar Najafi, Siamak Nasr, Nazgol Nayeri, Leila Nouraei, Mohammad Hamzeh, Marjan Hoshiar.

Don’t be sad, my land!
I have planted flower seeds in your wounds
One day there will be flower everywhere…
Alireza Roushan

For Women, For Life, For Freedom

It is through artistic creations that Iran reveals her true self and this many believe constitutes her most precious legacy. The Persian legacy has endured many turbulences of history. No historical shock has been able to break the chain. There were interruptions, yet they always permitted even provoked a resumption of creativity; ideas, styles, techniques forcefully imposed, were accepted and integrated in to our existing practice. The Iranian spirit is a tenacious one, we can endure extremes and at the same time our thousands of years of history teaches us to remain optimistic and persistent.
Throughout the last forty-four years of our perpetual revolution, the visual artists have had to carve their independence; in the first years the universities were purged through the so-called Cultural Revolution and artists and professors had to look for other jobs or start private classes. Many left the country. Although it was a difficult struggle, but they succeeded in achieving autonomy from a Regime that controls the distribution of our national wealth and would never support progressive arts. This resilient attitude which is now adapted by the younger generations, was very important in the recent difficult times where despite pressures and the fears, the visual arts has stood its ground and has been an outspoken and integral part of the structure of our brave civil society.
Our artists continue to consciously challenge the status quo and the peripheral environment as well as themselves. They insist on their sense of independence and persist in their capabilities like all other modern human beings. They help preserve a Persian legacy, enriching our lives and inspiring us as a nation to become better than we are. It is this perseverance and humility that is the source of the merit of Iranian arts and its limitless potential.
We are constantly reminded of our legendry bird: The Phoenix who is believed to possess the knowledge of all times, from ashes she rises to create wonderment, she plunges in to flames to be purified , to rise again, every time stronger, every time mightier.
Nazila Noebashari

Opening on 4th March 2022
On view until 1st April 2022

Manijeh Armin- Tajsar Jafari- Marjan Hoshiar- Koosha Moossavi- Arezoo Shahdadi- Shahrzad Araghinejad- Mehdi Farhadian- Allahyar Najafi- Parsoua Mahtash- Mohammad Eskandari- Nastaran Safaei- Parisa Taghipour- Mahya Giv- Maryam Farshad- Sara Tavana- Rene Saheb- Manijeh And Parisa Hejazi- Salé Sharifi

A Flower Blossoms for its Own Joy.
Oscar wilde

We celebrate the arrival of the Iranian New Year and a New Century by showcasing works of artists whose practice is mostly influenced by nature. On this occasion, it is fitting to quote an Ode to A Garden Carpet – By an unknown Sufi Poet (Circa 1500):
Here in this carpet lives an ever-lovely spring, un-scorched by summer’s ardent flame, safe too from autumn’s boisterous gales, Mid winter’s cruel ice and snow, ‘Tis gaily blooming still. Eyes hot-seared by desert glare find healing in its velvet shade. Splashing foundations and rippling pools in cool retreats, sore-wearied limbs restore, and tired hearts awaken with joy. The way was cruel.
Baffled by monotony and mocked by phantoms, delirious, beset by stalking death in guises manifold; The dreaded jinns, the beasts ferocious, the flaming heat and the exploding storms; from all these perils here at last set free; in the Garden all find security.
Here the long-laboring Earth, at last, gives birth. From apparent death, a new and lovely world is born; the jacinth imprisoned lies below the desert’s dusty floor. The stony wilderness is so bleak and bare, in ageless patience broods, aware of life within, the promise of fertility and abundance. Ever longing for deliverance. The world, at last, reveals its destiny.
Can we not then capture and restore The loveliness that gave us hope, still brightly mirrored on memory’s gliding waters or snared in the poets’ invisible net, so wide, so fragile, yet captor and conqueror of realities elusive?
Wrought in gold and azure, bright as carved metal. Dream-like foliage in sparking tones is caught, or else, in sumptuous shades of glossy lacquer, quiet but intense; in muffled browns and honey pure, Jasper cool and mellow cinnabar, that fairyland comes real again.
In sudden collisions, find sweet embrace; in rhythms enchanting, with stately pace, rollicking speed; emerging, retreating, reversing, in peaceful finality. Their conflicts reconcile, all in confederation blending like a chorus in part-song gladly singing, In contrapuntal play rejoicing, floating soft or wildly free, yet anchored in eternity.

Opening on 19th February 2021
On view until 2nd April 2021

Featured artists:
Farhad Ahrarnia- Koosha Moossavi- Shirin Mellatgohar- Arezoo Shahdadi- Farshid Davoodi- Shahrzad Araghinejad- Mehdi Farhadian- Farid Jafari Samarghandi- Navid Salajegheh- Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard-
Safora Fadaie- Maryam Farshad- Elmira Mirmiran- Mani Ramhormoozi & a project by Fatemeh Fazael Ardakani

The works in the exhibition aim to show the universality and individuality of Iranian contemporary artists. The appeal of paper as the raw material that has attracted artists for centuries remains strong. The works that will be on view are a sample of the diversity of practices of Iranian artists today, that persist in their individuality and carve their own paths. It is an adventure worth following, one that is as old as written history.

• The exhibition is the last of this year’s pandemic and a celebration in anticipation of a new year and a new century.

Opening on 14th February 2020
On view until 2nd March 2020

Most of the ordinary moments of the world, in their coldness and muteness, are important in history. On one side fate changing seconds occur and at the same moment, on the other side people spend their most ordinary moments. In this Twilight, Mehdi Farhadian lies in waiting to narrate the golden and solemn moments–and not necessarily the glorious ones–of history. In this deceit, he looks for forgotten and often understated epics, and with the inflated anger of our times, gives them enormity and splendor; by questioning the event itself and by weaving another epic. In the shadow of the enormity of events, he takes on a subject that is not normal but is normalized and adds pomp and ceremony to it. After all, he lives and works in a cultural context that adorns decadence and proudly displays it; fights bravely and decidedly, fails with dignity and pride, and finally garnishes and glorifies death. This situation demands–anonymously ordained from nowhere–a glorified language; a grand language to show an extraordinary event albeit normalized.
Excerpt from the catalog by Akram Ahmadi Tavana