Painting

[Rasputin]

March 17: The Axis of Art and Culture, A Contemporary Iranian American Art Exhibit Opens At Gallery One In San Francisco's Financial District

At a time when the President of the United States solicits support for war against another "Axis of Evil," seven Iranian American artists hope to alter dominant ideology through their art at a Francisco Art Exhibit.


For Immediate Release

SAN MATEO, Calif./EWORLDWIRE/March 1, 2007 --- A Contemporary Iranian American art exhibit opens on March 17th, 2007 at Gallery One in San Francisco's Financial district, and runs through the end of March in observance of No-Rooz, the Persian New Year.

"No-Rooz, literally 'New Day' is celebrated on the vernal equinox, or the first day of spring, and represents new beginnings. So it's a timely opportunity to showcase some of Iran's less talked about assets in the form of it's art for a change," says Lalé Shahparaki, the founder of Beyond Persia, the non-profit organization behind the exhibit. "With our shows, we hope not only to boost our own self-image, but hopefully to transcend cultural barriers and finally enter mainstream consciousness as something besides oil-rich terrorists. We see this as a sort of needed 'cultural upgrade' for those on both sides of the cultural fence, since both our image and our self-respect have been wounded with the President's words. As self-respecting Iranian-Americans, we want to step up to the palte with something fresh and new besides Ahmadinejad."

The exhibit features the work of Contemporary Masters like Amir Salamat and Sara Rahbar whose body of work includes complicated, abstract and often political pieces such as Salamat’s "The Human Pyramid" and tongue-in-cheek "George, Dick & Donald" or Rahbar's well-known "Terrorist." However, this special No-Rooz exhibit will feature several of Ms. Rahbar's softer works the heart of which is her stunning mixed media installation, "Flag," which is a carefully constructed U.S. flag made up of strips of traditional Persian fabrics, the kind usually worn by colorful peasants. Other artists in the show are Shiva Pakdel whose popular collages of Qajar men and women always strikes a nerve with 1st generation Iranian Americans who straddle the difficult East/West/Old/New barrier with equivalent grace.

Highly talented emerging artists like Maneli Jodat, Taraneh Mina, Arien Valizadeh and respected Ceramic artist, Babak Daleki will be on display and available for sale to the public from March 17 through March 30, 2007.

A special VIP Reception for the press, collectors, and those interested in previews will be held from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 17, 2007 and will feature a rare acoustic performance by Persian/Flamenco master Emad Bonakdar and percussionist Mohamad Mohsenzadeh, at Gallery One, 1 Embarcadero, Lobby level, suite 1 EC, San Francisco, CA 94111. Tel. 415-392-3570. Admission is free.

For Donations, Interviews or more information contact: Laleh Hashemi, Publicist, beyondpersia@gmail.com 415-738-2128



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CONTACT:
Laleh Hashemi
Beyond Persia
PO Box 5179
san Mateo, CA 94402
PHONE. 415-738-2182
EMAIL: Beyondpersia@gmail.org

http://www.beyondpersia.org

[Rasputin]

Naghmeh's creativity is expressed both in her brilliant writing and painting style, the "magical realism" of her own. She is a graduate of UBC where he majored both in Fine arts and in Psychology. Art studies in the unique setting of L'Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris further nurtured her profound imagination as well as her techniques and philosophy in art. As part of a larger life experience, Naghmeh has extensive experience in teaching ESL in China and enjoys further cultural stimulation through her fluency in French and Italian as well as her mother tongue.

[Rasputin]

Anahita Vossoughi is an Iranian-American artist based out of New York City. Her work deals with the combination of Eastern and Western culture. She has shown extensively in New York City at such venues as PPOW gallery and Spike gallery.

For more, visit Anahita Vossoughi's website at www.anahitavossoughi.com.

[Rasputin]

"Moments" are recent pages of my diary sketch book. The images speak of dichotomy and cultural conflict that surround me. Figures from Eastern and Western cultures and language discourse in the piece, while borders melt and cultures combine. Each snap-shot show a mind lost in translation, struggling to understand the moment. My approach is about healing past wounds, expanding horizons and facing a mirror with no expectation for the recognizable, the known. I try to look at my environment as an observer and not the judge. Every split second is a fresh plot and another opportunity for creating a little change in a woman‚s unvoiced life and in an unveiled universe. War is not an answer .

https://www.nahidnavab.com

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

“‘If there is any hope for the future of humanity, it is Art.’ With a brush in my hand, I was born on January, 7, 1949, in Abadan, Iran. Yes, I am a Capricorn. My art addresses human condition: our desires, our anguish, our confusion, and, above all, our behavior. In this, I have to study and reflect upon our soul, our Spirit. For art without spirit is only a craft. In addition to being a painter, I have a Ph.D. in Iranian Linguistics. I have worked on ancient Iranian (dead) languages. Knowing about ancient Iran has definitely expanded my art. I am also a poet, musician, performer, and reciter of poetry, especially those of Rumi (CD: Koorosh Angali Recites Rumi, Vol. I, X Dot 25 Music Productions, 1997) and Sohrab Sepehri, the Persian modern-day Rumi. I believe if Rumi, Tchaikovsky, Sepehri, and I were neighbors, we would have made great buddies; alas, I never met any of them!”

http://beinart.org/artists/koorosh-angali/

[Rasputin]

For Seyed Alavi, creating objects and asking questions are equally important in his art-making process. For nearly two decades, the Bay Area artist has been working with public institutions to create conceptual works of art to be experienced by passersby. Spark follows Alavi as he offers a guided tour of his art and working process.

Though Alavi produces tangible objects, he thinks of himself as a conceptual artist, that is, the ideas behind his works are centralized over the finished object. Whereas many artists choose to master a specific medium and explore multiple subjects through it, Alavi works in several media. He develops a concept, plans the work for a specific location, then outsources the actual fabrication of the piece.
Alavi has created some of his most penetrating works with the help of high school students. His first such project was a series of text pieces painted under the overpasses of Interstate 580 in Oakland. Collaborating with a group of students from the region, he helped them to develop wordplays that would cause those who viewed them to think about the topics raised. Stenciled in capitalized serif fonts, the murals provocatively announce "INVISIBLE COLORS," "INFORM(N)ATION," and "D FFERENCE," the last suggesting that one needs to include his or her "I" to make the "difference."

Another project done in collaboration with students is a series of variations on the ubiquitous schematized human figures found on street signs. Together with a team of students, Alavi came up with 17 surreal alterations of the figures. They then painted their versions onto utility boxes scattered throughout the town of Emeryville, Calif., in order to raise questions about the nature of human identity, interaction and existence.

Spark also trails Alavi to San Francisco's Exploratorium, where he and four other artists have been invited to create installations in the museum's space based on the notion of "liminality," the condition of being between states. Alavi's concept provides the physical challenge of closing off the skylights in the Exploratorium's massive space so that he can program the illumination of lights clustered in a ball high above visitors. As museumgoers move in and around the space, their relationship to the moving lights continually changes, thereby making them aware of their constant state of liminal perception.

Seyed Alavi earned a B.S. from San Jose State University and an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has created site-specific installations for locations in New York, Long Beach and the Bay Area. He has taught classes and workshops at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University and the University of California at Davis.

http://www.kqed.org/arts/people/spark/profile.jsp?id=17124

[dosto]

you are really pioneer in this regard. thanks for these nice photos

great photos really

[Rasputin]

Born in 1971, Neda Darzi was always interested in Art. So much so that she obtained her diploma from Tehran girls school of art in 1992.

She then followed her dream by getting a BA from Tehran Azad University and then an MA from the Art University of Tehran. So far, Neda has done five major exhibitions and taken part in some 30 group shows in Iran, France and Italy. She is also a filmmaker and has extended her art to the world of cermics, sculpture, photography and Iranian tapestry.

She uses sombre colors that are alive at the same time. Here are some samples of her work.

[Rasputin]

Society of Cinema and Arts (SoCiArts) will proudly host the opening reception of feminine on April 10, 2009 from 8 to 11 p.m. at a gallery space on 11821 Mississippi Ave in Los Angeles, featuring eight of its member artists, from various genres and mediums of arts. SoCiArts invites the community and leading collectors to join this event, showcasing these emerging and mid-career female artists including Jodii Tseng, Karen Fiorito, ***stin Johnson, Kmax, Mila Charleston, Mona Shomali, Negin Karbassian and Shagha Ariannia. With over 70 original artworks at various price ranges, everyone attending feminine can go home a collector.

SoCiArts in continuing the promise to its member artists to promote their art produces this exhibition to create a platform for like-minded artists and art enthusiasts to connect with one another. In conjunction with this event,



SoCiArts also proudly promotes the Downtown Women's Center, providing hope and safe shelter to women without a home. Please visit www.dwcweb.org

[Rasputin]

Kmax




iv style="text-align: justify;">KMAX was born Kelly Cadwallader in Denver Colorado. She was raised in Sacramento California since the age of two. California's progressive politics and diverse geography play a big roll in her work. Kelly is a conceptual artist with an emphases in sculpture, video and drawing. She has shown all over California, New York City, Rotterdam and Dusseldorf. 1995 she received a Rockefeller grant for the inaugural show Cultural Contamination at the renowned La Panaderia Arts Space in Mexico City. While living Korea her name was changed to Kelly Max and KMAX was born. In 1998 she moved her studio to the Downtown section of Los Angeles to the area that has become the Artist District. Recently she premiered video in the LA Heros video show at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Currently she is raising her daughter in Napa, CA while studying herbalism. She received her BFA from SFAI, San Francisco.




Mila Charleston

Mila Charleston graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2003, with a B.F.A. in illustration. Her work primarily consists of oil, acrylic and collage.



Mona Shomali

Mona Shomali was born in Los Angeles, CA in the year 1979, the same year of the Iranian Revolution. While pregnant, her mother fled Iran out of fear of persecution for her non-Muslim religion (Baha’i Faith), followed months later by her father. In her early years, she was raised almost exclusively with the Iranian Diaspora, not learning English till her first day of kindergarten. Eventually, the young family moved to the San Francisco bay area. Mona was raised in the east bay, attended university in Santa Cruz, and lived and worked in San Francisco. A few years later, she moved to New York with her husband and completed a Masters program at NYU. Her first real rush as an Artist was when she was 14 years old and was introduced by her high school art teacher to the live nude drawing group, a weekly collective that was organized by the Berkeley Artists Guild. She became a regular, experimenting with how to sketch and paint the human body in charcoal, watercolor and oil mediums. Painting was always an extremely personal way of resolving the contradictions and frustrations of living between what felt like clashing cultural rules for women and men. More importantly, it became a way to confront the media images of Iranian women who were black shrouded, shapeless, and sexless- as if having no desire, voices or volitions of their own.

The Iranian/ Persian “women” in the paintings became surreal and symbolic, transforming ethnographic taboos and traditional assumptions of both cultures into a more complex self defined identity. The contradiction and extremes within the narrative of being Iranian-American are explored: rebellion and submission, freedom and shame, tradition and modernity, public and private, vulnerability and pride, ownership and selflessness, oppression and liberation. The live model subjects of the paintings have been various Iranian friends and relatives over the years. As far as influences, Mona’s art has been most inspired by the (California) bay area figurative movement (1950-1965), and Iranian or Iranian- American art. Of the bay area figurative artist movement, the individuals that made the deepest impressions were: Nathan Oliveira, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Brown and Manuel Neri. As far as other figurative artists, European artists such as Matisse and Gauguin and Latino artists such as Kahlo and Riviera were also very influential. While Iranian royal art during the Qajar Epoch (1785-1925) fascinates in its flat ornamental style, many other contemporary Iranian-American artists tell a narrative story in an ethnographic language that other members of the modern and global Iranian Diaspora can relate to. Her most admired contemporary artists are: Shirin Neshat, Ali Dadgar, Marjane Satrapi and Taraneh Hemami.



Negin Karbassian

Born and raised in Iran, Negin Karbassian studied graphic design in high school and photography in The Center for Young Filmmakers in Tehran. At the age of 16 she attended Parson’s School of Design in New York City, studying flash animation. One year later she moved to California and after residing in Los Angeles, she became highly interested in Photo Journalism and Anthropology. She attended Brooks Institute of Photography and received her degree in 2003 in the same fields. Since her graduation, Negin has been traveling around the world as a photographer, focusing on people of all nations and their respective cultures. Souvenirs from Iran in 2008 was Negin’s second exhibition. She had a highly successful show in Tehran in 2005. She lives and works between Tehran and Los Angeles.



Shagha Ariannia

Shagha Ariannia is an Artist based in Southern California who works primarily on paintings, multi-media installation and experimental video. Born and raised in Iran till age of seventeen and moved to U.S. since then. Shagha holds a bachelor degree in the Studio Arts from the university of California, Irvine. Shagha is primarily interested in the question of representation, issues of Identity, hybridity and political possibility in relation to identity and social construction. Shagha’s paintings are influenced by Gerhard Richter’s abstractions and Persian poetry, which is laid in Farsi text in the paintings. These texts are poems that are bleared, smeared over and deconstructed to words in a way to function as forms and shapes rather than language. The spaces created in her paintings are neither present nor past but only an imaginary places existence in the gap between past and present. The gap that happens between to places in process of transferring. Therefore the text in form of shapes plays as a sign of past, remembrance and identity.“ In my paintings I’m trying to create a bridge between the east and west, the modern abstraction raised from west, along with the ancient Farsi language. It can be read as merging of tradition and modernity. “ Shagha said,” I have been dealing with the use of text in my paintings in many ways and trying to convey them as signs and symbols rather than something linear and obvious”.

[Dokhtar Bandari]

Farhad Nabipour is a painter from Iran. His photography captures a modern perspective with deep colors and fresh angles. Enjoy the exhibition of this great Iranian artist.

They remind me of Pink Floyd album covers.