Sepand Danesh Iranian, b. 1984

Sepand Danesh's approach develops tools highlighting the perpetual movement of thought, its paradoxes, its connections and the richness of its variability. He develops precise protocols that can be viewed as experiments produced by the human brain.

Amongst these protocols, drawing allows him to fragment ideas through a grid by sampling each reflection into a sketch. Juxtaposed with other similar thoughts, it becomes a codex or an eclectic set of creative moments. Being at the source of all my projects, this cognitive exercise functions as a notebook.
Painting and trompe-l’oeil techniques lead him to design heuristic spaces that aim to provoke the viewer. His canvases are always composed of a corner without floor or ceiling. Inside this exploration space, he places objects with omniscient appearances, extracted from his personal memory and from a wider memory taken in his historical and artistic environment. The corner encloses and prevents the momentum of the body in its progression and movement, forcing the spirit to escape through imagination and creativity. His paintings thus offer the viewer a cognitive dialectic of prevention and escape. He uses the corner as a metaphor for confinement in his body, in languages, in countries, on earth, and that goes without saying, in the human condition.
Alternatively, Danesh creates sequences of variations in volume, stemming from the same fragment – a cube or a pixel in volume, which it can also be called a ‘voxel’. Assemblages or combinations invented this way produce postures, inducing a lingering desire for expression, to the point that one would be deceived by the illusion of their movement. An illusion accentuated by the interplay of shadows and painted lights, giving a digital aspect to sculptures and getting spectators off the beaten track, inviting them to interact with their environment.

Academic research helps him to update his creative process and find new lines of study. Observing the evolution of our thinking systems included the following past initiatives: A research project on urban grids in post-modern cities (funded by the CNAP from 2017 to 2019 as part of a research and creation support program). An initiation of a research program (Hubtopia) gathering artists and researchers around the problematic of the Hub. An implementation of his drawing protocol as part of a connected pen project in partnership with researchers and philosophers in cognitive science and network science.

From his first drawings to his current projects in cognitive science, he strive to highlight the beauty of human thought. The works he proposes to the public give an opportunity for everyone to get a grasp of their cognitive processes. He firmly believe in one important thing: artists have the responsibility to reveal to society the relationship between individuals and their environment. Why not propose new ways to reveal ourselves to ourselves, using the entirety of our potential? Therefore a question arises: which predictions could we make about the evolution of human thinking within the realm of the digital age?