REZA MORADI

Circular Ruins
6 July -24 July, 2012

Assar Art Gallery is pleased to present Circular Ruins, an exhibition of paintings by Reza Moradi.

With 27 works on display, Reza Moradi exhibits the outcome of his take on Persian Painting for the past decade in search of miniature’s contemporary visual and conceptual semantics.  Using stories of Shahnameh¹ as a dramatic pretext in addition to alienating and de-familiarizing the visual language of an old artistic medium, Reza Moradi has succeeded to use his innovative approach to retell the epic stories of the most renowned Persian tragic literature in an utterly contemporary language.

By distancing himself from the context on which his paintings are based, Reza Moradi obliterates all archetypical descriptions of Persian Painting. On the other hand, the characters and main elements in each panel of his work are so small that applying any miniaturesque technique becomes almost impossible. All this, in addition to his extensive use of colour black and variations of red, copper, gold and silver have resulted in a series of small-scale dramatic, deep and congenial paintings that stylishly portray some very contemporary interpretations of an indigenous creative mind.

Born in Kermanshah, Iran in 1973, Reza Moradi did not finish his studies in graphic design and rather started working in the field.  His first solo exhibition was held in 1992.


¹[The Book of Kings], a national epic written by the Persian poet, Ferdowsi, over a period of several decades in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. This literary masterpiece is mainly about the mythical and historical past of ancient Persia from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.