Assar Art Gallery at Contemporary Istanbul 2011

24 - 27 November 2011, Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Center, Lutfi Kirdar Hall, Booth 306, level A (ground floor) 
For the 6th edition of Contemporary Istanbul, Assar Art Gallery is pleased to present paintings and a sculpture by a group of six of its prominent artists, Alireza Adambakan, Samira Alikhanzadeh, Reza Lavassani, Ahmad Morshedloo, Azadeh Razaghdoost and Babak Roshaninejad. 
In this exhibition a fantastic ten piece painting of Ahmad Morshedloo will be unveiled to the public for the first time while Reza Lavassani’s enigmatic papier-mâché sculpture of a tree is taken from his latest Wonder series where mythical figures, objects and animals inspired by old Persian folktales and poetry were visualized and rendered into highly unique sculptures. Samira Alikhanzadeh’s mixed media work is selected from her sought after Carpet series where she used a real carpet and old photographs on board to express her personal connection to art and life especially focusing on concept of identity in relation to past and present. Alireza Adambakan’s haunting paintings are inspired by subjects emanating from the world of chaos and sentimentality; he uses the dramatic characteristic of colours in creating his poetic imagery that are inspired directly by his own strong psychological links to religion. The new large portraits by Babak Roshaninejad are recognizable by his contemporary figurative style, his heavily applied oil colours and his rough gestural abstraction in depicting his ideas and subjects, focusing more than ever on his out of norm ideas about form, existence and reality and, Azadeh Razaghdoost’s painting is the depiction of her own long rooted relationship to love and tragedy, the blood red vague writings on her thickly applied by hand paint suggests memories of love, loss and untold stories of a the artist’s feminine dilemmas and of a childhood spent in war.
This exhibition wishes to embody the gallery's long-standing mission which is to spark East-West dialogue by presenting art by some of the best contemporary Iranian artists who have not only been known and presented internationally but are very much key players in the contemporary Iranian art scene.