MOHAMMAD HAMZEH

Reality or Truth
27 April -16 May, 2012

Assar Art Gallery is pleased to present Reality or Truth, an exhibition of paintings by Mohammad Hamzeh. 
With 14 works on display, Hamzeh reveals the contrast between the true and the mannered self by exposing his crumpled human figures once again.  In this collection of the most acclaimed Crumples series, the portraits are distorted and exaggerated as the initial step and then crumpled to suggest a more correct human figure, unlike his previous works, where he deformed and exaggerated the proportionately drawn figures through crumpling.
To Hamzeh, the crumples or the wrinkles as he calls them define the passage of time and the pressure imposed by either the society or self. He sees any representation by the humans as a mannered image. One becomes more wrinkled and metaphorically more complicated in the process of aging and therefore reveal less of their true selves. Principally, the crumpled figures explore what is real and what is true, real being the mannered version and true the actual self. 
The work on the Crumples series started in 2001 as a series of works on paper that were later privately sold to the Iran Heritage Foundation in the UK.  In 2003, a collection of 14 acrylic-on-cardboard self-portraits and 7 crumpled up heads were exhibited at Etemad Art Gallery. Subsequently, the crumples started to take on an individualistic role and popped up as crumpled up figures against a painted background. However, as his works started to become larger, he switched to canvas -- his practiced medium since 2007.  The work on the series is still in progress.  
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1963, Mohammad Hamzeh started painting under the supervision of the Iranian Master, Aydeen Aghdashloo in 1983. He has been part of various national and international exhibitions ever since his first solo exhibition at the Golestan Art Gallery in Tehran in 1992.