Exhibition Review:
on Aklil-al-Molook By Pooya Abbasian & Farshid Monfared
by Amirali Ghasemi
Mohsen Art Gallery was a host to an unusual show in late Feb, Aklil-al-Molook by By Pooya Abbasian & Farshid Monfared was featuring artworks applied on different materials and mediums from porcelain plates to multi layer vinyl stickers on transparent Plexiglas presented in box like frames and a large scale out door paste up paper installed in the yard of the gallery. The combination of their rich design and graphics with cheesy and kitsch essence of what is being made as Persian miniature these days, create a cleverly recycled and retouched fresh animated look. Observing the Iranian pop culture and using it as a lab for creating new works is always a great job, but something seemed to be missing to some degree was contribution of these experiment to a public and their specific taste which was referred to. Presenting such a work in a up town gallery in such a neighbourhood doesn’t really communicate which the street people to prefers such miniatures with such figures, flowers, decorations and kitsch golden frames. We hope to see another street art project by them soon somewhere in Tehran, even with a hit an go kind of attitude which most likely is the only possible tactic in todays’s tehran strict mode of surveillance and control.
It seems that the history of Iranian painting (Negargari) has stemmed from three sources. The first could be conceived as the semiotic system of Iranian mysticism, which, through providing a common symbolic order between the artist and his contemporary audience, made the golden skies, the silver rivers, and the halos, palpable and familiar. The second was the governmental system which, by funding the artists, made room for such works to be executed – a traditional government whose ideological and political influence, of course, could not be ignored. The third rendered a composition consisting of the social context on which the artist was grounded and the impacts of other nations on the art of that particular era. In times Chinese, in other times Byzantine or Turfan miniatures each lent some of their visual elements to Iranian painting so as to be translated by Iranian painter according to his particular social context. By centuries, the audience of Iranian painting was always familiar with this triple source while knowing how to mentally relate to the heart of the work. However, the transformation within Qajarid era – especially, the influx of modernism – severed the close ties with previously accepted sources. Houses, clothing, communication devices, and many other aspects of everyday life became increasingly subjected to change. If employing new visual elements seemed unaccustomed at the end of Safavid era, this time, at the eve of the new century, what appeared even stranger was the very aspiration for the survival of the language of Iranian painting.
Thus, a new generation of painting emerged, carrying a false name, ‘miniature’. It attempted to retain something of the tradition while persisting to attract the contemporary audience. The golden skies, the silver rivers, the flaming trees, and the colourful birds, all became void of meaning, as a result of the disrupted link with the first source. The elements of the Ideal world as a lamé with its golden wraps pillaged was reduced to a beautiful icon replete with the nonsense. Parallel to this, the other two sources continued their tasks in a new way: The dignity of the Ideal Beauteous became a site for manifestation of mastery in plastic surgery. The eyes grew larger as the noses tended upwards. The eyeliner which seemed an eternal phenomenon was replaced by a heavy make-up that could be removed at night with a cotton pad. However, curling garments and deer were still there. The result is a semiotic, and of course visual, disorder originating from the third source, which could be seen both ironically and wistfully.
Ali Ettehad, Winter 2010