Navid Salajegheh

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 24th July 2020
On view until 10th August 2020

Featuring Artists:
Hossein Valamanesh- Arita Shahrzad- Nico Vascellari- Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar- Zarvan Rouhbakhshan- Mahdiyeh Pazouki-Allahyar Najafi- Anahita Razmi-Navid Salajegheh- Amir Hossein Shahnazi- Iman Safaei- Mahoor Toosi

It is not a wonder that artists who have inherited the traditions of intertwining text and image (particularly in reference to Persian Illustrated Manuscript art) should use words to create art. Nowadays, new contexts are added, whereby implications and associations are transformed with no changes in the meaning and shape of words and only by relocating and altering the context. Now words are moved and repositioned, not only in books and inscriptions but in every surface and space that can be seized. Words slide from one context to the next, and in this movement, both the pitch of the slide and the subject are important. But in every new encounter, there is more microscopic attention to meaning, and texts are read word by word. In the labyrinth of contexts and all languages, any disruption and multiplied references to add to the complexity of meaning. Of course, in a language as formal and as courtesies as Farsi, ambiguity can sometimes be received as literal meaning and sometimes as a complex and deceptive metaphor. Quoting a notable phrase can now be a critique of dominant powers. The most ordinary words can reference a trend, and the most common words can become personal manifestos. Any intimate word can become the voice of the public’s demands, and any suggestion can be perceived as an insult and any ridicule a political and social action. In this way, even elimination and absence of meaning can be considered meaningful, and the fieriest texts castrated stammer.

Akram Ahmadi Tavana

Opening at Aaran Projects on 13th December 2019
On view until 30th December 2019

This exhibition is an installation made up of three rooms: The Aphotic Zone, The State of Stutter, and The White Room.
The Aphotic Zone: Where light does not reach, or hardly does. That it “hardly does” means it still does a little, though not enough, for if there is no light, there is neither vision nor is there representation. The sensory experience of the lack of light is possible only through a passage from light to its lack.
The State of Stutter: Having collaborated with the “Retribution Committee,” the calligrapher Emād al-Kottāb was arrested in 1912 and remained under surveillance even though released after a while until Reza Pahlavi was enthroned. Some of his prison writings, generally known as his prison Siyāh Mašqs (lit. “black practice”), are at once practice and improvised writing, part complaint, part prayer and mantra, part delusion. These pieces are highly fragmented, with no punctuation and no lineation. In a process that the artist calls “šarh” (interpretation), which also means “disentangling” and “tearing apart,” he offers a new formation of one of Emād al-Kottāb’s Siyāh Mašqs. In addition, nine works done with paper and ink, titled “Black šarh,” which are another abstraction of Emād al-Kottāb’s Siyāh Mašqs, will be displayed in the same room.
The White Room: consists of three Light Boxes titled “The Origin of the World,” with nine paper and ink pieces titled “White šarh.” Together they form artists’ interpretation of “šarh” as an act and part of the exhibition’s underlying theme, “light,” which is an imperative element in this room.