Page 67 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

BIENNALE VENEZIA

50TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION 2003

Dreams and Conflicts - The Dictatorship of the Viewer

ARTE COMMUNICATIONS

la Biennale di Venezia IRAN

Palazzo Malipiero S. Marco 3198, Venice
Artists: Hossein Khosrojerdi, Behrooz Daresh, Ahmad Nadalian
Commissioner: Majid Karshenas

Organisation: Museum of Contemporary Art of Tehran, Cultural Institute of Iran in Rome
Co-organisation: Paolo De Grandis, Arte Communications
BEHROOZ DARESH Assistant Commissioner: Ali Reza Samir-Azar
UNTITLED 2003 With the patronage of the Ministry of Culture of Iran

In Iranian contemporary art, it is not so much “dreams and
conflicts”, as it is “dreams thanks to conflicts” and “conflicts
as the dynamics that lead to the realisation of dreams”: dynamics
within the iranian social context, dynamics of the spirit of relations
between Iran and the rest of the world, dynamics of evolution and
in the uninterrupted research of one single artist. It is a dynamics
whose strength is such that it renders the “dictatorship of the
spectator” and any other possible market exigency all but
irrelevant.
It has been almost forty years that Iran has been absent from the
art scene of the Biennale of Venice. It is not by accident that its
presence today, in a historical period in which, with greater force
and fertility – and all fields in which the personality of man and of
the citizen are expressed- the quest and the pursuit of the iranian
proposal constitutes one of the most interesting examples of the
attempt to oppose uniformity and adaptation while taking the
mentality, styles and trends of the “other” into consideration.
Iranian society is young with the latest generations being highly
educated, trained in the use of modern technology, and watchful
of the flow of external stimuli in a context that is already rich
with historical heritage and their own cultural traditions. Each
artist conducts his own uninterrupted search, above all, of
the new in himself. He explores, in his own psyche, the contradiction between taking roots and moving
forward.
Commissioner, Prof. Majid Karshenas, doctor in social science with diverse specialisations obtained in Texas and Strasburg, holds the position
of Director of the Cultural Institute of Iran in Italy since 1999.
Even in such a capacity he conducts his own research, recapitulated in numerous publications, on new social issues and the new forms of
democracy and dialogue in his country. The assistant Commissioner, Ali Reza Sami Azar, Director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
since 1988, holds positions of prestige in diverse government institutions of culture and of contemporary art in Iran.
Each one of the artists, Hossein Khosrojerdi, Behrooz Daresh, and Ahmad Nadalian, presented by T.M.C.A. in this event, gets fully involved in this
thriving course of research developed by the Iranian culture in art. In his recent installations, Behrooz Daresh, painter, sculptor and musician, uses
hundreds of minimalist aluminium elements suspended in an allegorical conflict between fantasy and reality. It commits the viewer to a flux of
emotions that are also stimulated by the blue and crimson red lighting: the aesthetic idea is above all focused on the concept of the non–existence
and of nothingness. The work of Hossein Khosrojerdi, eclectic and prolific painter, draftsman, designer and cartoonist, is a combination between
digital art and performance: wrapped like a mummy, neither man nor woman, neither western nor eastern, he becomes universal and immortal.
Ahmad Nadalian, versatile and internationally known artist, uses every technique and material to express abstract concepts. Sculpting fish like

WORLD of ART 67