The Factory 01

Sara Abbasian, Sasan Abri, Mehrdad Afsari, Mojtaba Amini, Majid Biglari,Gohar Dashti, Alireza Fani, Ali Phi, Behrang Samadzadegan, Arya Tabandehpoor

Mohsen Gallery is delighted to announce the group exhibition entitled Factory 01 running from June 29 to July 18, 2018.

The members of the “Factory” see the necessity of survival not in disconnecting from the bigger factory of which we are all members, but in representing, and enhancing its performance through creating works of art. Sara Abbasian, Sasan Abri, Mehrdad Afsari, Mojtaba Amini, Majid Biglari,  Gohar Dashti, Alireza Fani, Ali Phi, Behrang Samadzadegan and Arya Tabandehpoor are members of this “Factory,” showing their works with an emphasis on personal narratives: from organic thoughts to thinking bodies, from places and memories to fantasies and conscience awareness of pain and suffering.

At times, we see the complete absence of human subject and body, such as Gohar Dashti’s abstract “Still Life” series that makes references to a 19th century technique. The simplicity of form and content represented as fragmented elements, imply a probable order before the inevitable chaos and destruction.

In Mehrdad Afsari’s Forty: A Treatise on Terrene Traverse, the representation of the serene and illusive quality of the natural world and the viewer’s gaze at the distant horizon, convey a faithful subject-object relation. Afsari combines the stillness and wildness of nature with a naked magnificence and a subtle absence.

Conversely, the literal depiction of emotions in Alireza Fani’s series engages the body in the clearest way. “Embrace” does not reveal psychological and physical phenomena about presence and touching bodies; rather, they have social implications with some sort of spontaneity.

Now moving from “events” to awareness and physical suffering, using cannibal night-blinds in her series, “The Night-Blinds Do Not Show Mercy to Each Other,” Sara Abbasian deals with a theme that runs through most of her works, namely war. Not all wars start deliberately, but its victims suffer consciously. Assault on enemy positions is not merely physical, but also psychological; like molesting a female body during the time of war in the battlefield. Mojtaba Amini’s collages, “Death is the Highest Orgasm,” address the same bodily concerns and psychological warfare with sexual implications.

Another form of imaginary representation of the body, which is more ambiguous, can be found in Arya Tabandehpoor’s “Bones” and “Portraits” series. He considers the body in terms of its fragility with a more imaginative approach: impermanence, gradual degradation of functions, and eventually, death.

Now we move from fantasy to memory, and from memory to space. With the Polaroid photographs of The Dormant Yellow, and Exposed, Sasan Abri moves from urban spaces to the memory. His works are representations of the city, which is a melting pot of settlements, activities, commute, and recreation. However, none of these things really make sense to the inhabitants.

When representation tends towards fantasy, it becomes void of social concerns. In his “Heading Utopia” series, Behrang Samadzadegan’s point of departure in order to present his interpretation of Iran’s history is fantasizing about documents of Iranian political history in a journey towards his imaginary utopia. He questions, destroys, and creates, not considering the unchangeable fate of watercolor as contradictory to events, defeats, and our bewilderments in history.

In a temporal space or a localized time, every rhythm implies a spatio-temporal relation. As a consequence of this cycle, the spatio-temporal factors create an interconnected process; whether in the same direction with the flow or against it. Using the concepts of “anti-time” and “anti-cycle” in his video, “ʌntɪtʌɪmwʌɪz,” Ali Phi looks for balance not in moving along with the mainstream, but in moving against it.

What remains from a disaster or a devastation is illegible and obscure remnants of things that no longer exist. The aesthetic of Majid Biglari’s pieces and objects in The Experience of Dishevelment, however, is not trying to glorify destruction or represent devastation; rather, it is defined by giving meaning and identity to the remnants and somehow appropriating them. Biglari has his own personal narrative of the new function of the remnants of a disaster.