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Lot Essay
"I had picked as a subject matter an object that was the first man had made and here I was, thousands of years later, doing the same thing again, despite every revolution, all the changes that had happened". (Farhad Moshiri quoted in W. Singh-Bartlett, "Farhad Moshiri When Ancient becomes Modern", in Canvas magazine, vol. I, no. 5, September/October 2005, pp. 76-79).
Iranian-born Farhad Moshiri has experimented with various mediums in the course of his career and is known for his constant recreation and exploration of innovative techniques in order to express his interpretation of the contemporary world. Following his stay abroad during which he graduated from CalArts in California, Farhad Moshiri returned to his homeland in the early 1990s, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Passionate about the moving image, Moshiri faced the issue of censorship which made him return to the traditional canvas.
Inspired by ancient Persian ceramic vessels of which he is an avid collector and fascinated by the essence of the paint as a medium, he plays with the texture of his works to achieve a new form of art. The result is an outstanding series of bowl and jar paintings where tradition and modernity meet. His work is replete with visual remnants of the past and subtly points to deeper issues regarding the fragmentation that he critically observes in mass culture and modernity, particularly in the Iranian contemporary society. Moshiri's bowls, whilst aesthetically brilliant, indeed represent cracked, aging objects in a state of decay. The undoubted beauty they exude betrays the unease rife in their conception. To attain the highly texturised surface of his bowls, Moshiri rolls up, folds and crushes the canvas allowing the almost dried pigment to fake and crackle, before consolidating the surface with a transparent glue to avoid any further paint loss.
The initial series of vessels, of which the present work is a fine example, were oversized depictions of vases either slender necked, heart-shaped or round, often in an ochre monochromatic palette, meant to be displayed just like ancient artefacts. Later on, the vases were set against a white neutral background and sometimes a multicoloured palette was used. Regardless of the style he used, his compositions beautifully fuse a contemporary vibe with the remnants of his cultural heritage, revealing the artist's attempt to eternalise a celebrated and glorious past of his beloved homeland. One of his earliest and greatest bowls, the present work with its crackling effect and contrasts brings the past and the present together in a serene composition while subtly alluding to the everlasting dualities between tradition and modernity that the artist witnessed in post-revolutionary Iran.
Iranian-born Farhad Moshiri has experimented with various mediums in the course of his career and is known for his constant recreation and exploration of innovative techniques in order to express his interpretation of the contemporary world. Following his stay abroad during which he graduated from CalArts in California, Farhad Moshiri returned to his homeland in the early 1990s, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Passionate about the moving image, Moshiri faced the issue of censorship which made him return to the traditional canvas.
Inspired by ancient Persian ceramic vessels of which he is an avid collector and fascinated by the essence of the paint as a medium, he plays with the texture of his works to achieve a new form of art. The result is an outstanding series of bowl and jar paintings where tradition and modernity meet. His work is replete with visual remnants of the past and subtly points to deeper issues regarding the fragmentation that he critically observes in mass culture and modernity, particularly in the Iranian contemporary society. Moshiri's bowls, whilst aesthetically brilliant, indeed represent cracked, aging objects in a state of decay. The undoubted beauty they exude betrays the unease rife in their conception. To attain the highly texturised surface of his bowls, Moshiri rolls up, folds and crushes the canvas allowing the almost dried pigment to fake and crackle, before consolidating the surface with a transparent glue to avoid any further paint loss.
The initial series of vessels, of which the present work is a fine example, were oversized depictions of vases either slender necked, heart-shaped or round, often in an ochre monochromatic palette, meant to be displayed just like ancient artefacts. Later on, the vases were set against a white neutral background and sometimes a multicoloured palette was used. Regardless of the style he used, his compositions beautifully fuse a contemporary vibe with the remnants of his cultural heritage, revealing the artist's attempt to eternalise a celebrated and glorious past of his beloved homeland. One of his earliest and greatest bowls, the present work with its crackling effect and contrasts brings the past and the present together in a serene composition while subtly alluding to the everlasting dualities between tradition and modernity that the artist witnessed in post-revolutionary Iran.