Mohammad Bozorgi: Against the Darkness, 30 May 2016 — 25 Aug 2016
Exhibitions

Mohammad Bozorgi: Against the Darkness

Ayyam Gallery Dubai (DIFC) announces Against the Darkness, the solo exhibition of leading Iranian calligrapher and painter Mohammad Bozorgi. Selected from the artist’s recent series, Coloured Tears, Grey World, the featured works were produced in response to regional conflicts, and describe the impact that such widespread destruction has on the global community. Bozorgi’s latest body of work also serves as an exploration of colour and the high level of abstraction that can be realised when calligraphic forms are freed in complex compositions.

In an accompanying statement, Bozorgi describes the artist’s role of depicting the world as he or she observes it. According to the painter, references to everyday life in art are a form of translation that materialises even in certain uses of colour. In Coloured Tears, Grey World, the concept of darkness, or the decline of living conditions into a constant state of despair, is countered with colour in protest of ‘lost dreams’ and ‘lost lives.’ At the same time, Bozorgi seeks to inspire a sense of hope in viewers by alluding to a world shaped by beauty, peace, and tranquility.

The large-scale painting Martyred Child (Damascus) (2015), for example, uses contrasting hues to pay tribute to the young victims of war, as a sienna background is overcome by the radiance of cream-coloured text. The circular design of the script suggests the movement of a procession as letters are stretched to fluid lines that seem to travel beyond the edge of the picture plane. Words are contained in a circle at the centre of the painting, creating an optical illusion that suggests infinite spatial depth. From afar, this focal point and the surrounding text resemble the magnificence of a brilliant sun that shines over a dimmed setting.

In the diptych War and Freedom (2015) symmetry is used to describe battling ideologies as repeated words meet but do not cross a central axis. Bozorgi’s calligraphic forms take on anthropomorphic attributes, as text appears to move like a mass of people that swarms a target object or site. The identical nature of the composition’s two sides creates a mirrored image, an environment where chaos has arisen and a clear understanding of its causes is indistinguishable.

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