Iman Raad Iranian, b. 1979

Iman Raad (b. 1979, Mashhad, Iran) lives and works in New York City. He holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University and a BE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sistan and Baluchestan. He is currently a resident at the Queens Museum Studio Program and an adjunct faculty at The Cooper Union School of Art. Raad works across a variety of media, including painting, drawing, embroidery, graphic design, and performance lectures. In these diverse works, he draws on influences such as Persian painting, Mughal painting, South-Asian Truck painting. He combines these local references with digital image culture and contemporary subject matter to create his work that ranges from small reverse paintings on glass to mural-scale wall installations. Using a vivid, high key palette, altered perspective, and repetition that mimics digital glitches, results in a riot of color and movement. Traditionally ornamental elements such as birds and flowers and still life subject matters such as fruits and candles are recalibrated into subjects that carry narrative import and are given animate, unnatural presences. These are intertwined with social events and historical moments rendered in fantastical ways to draw in the viewer. Raad's work has been featured in several books including The Phaidon archive of five hundred designs that matter and reviewed in media including The New York Times and Frieze Magazine. Recent exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), the Flag Art Foundation, New York, Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile, the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9), Brisbane, Australia, and solo shows at Sargent's Daughters Gallery, New York, and Dastan Gallery, Tehran, Iran. Public collections include The British Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), the Allentown Art Museum, Lafayette College Art Collection, Les Arts Décoratifs, Ogaki poster Museum, Zurich Poster Collection, and The Iranian Museum of Graphic Design.