Asal Peirovi | "Curtains": Dastan's Basement

Dastan is pleased to announce Asal Peirovi’s solo exhibition titled “Curtains” at Dastan’s Basement. The exhibition will be open for public viewing from May 25 through June 15, 2018. This is Asal Peirovi’s second exhibition at the Basement. Her work was previously featured in a solo exhibition at Shirin Gallery (“Shahla’s Bridge, 2014, Tehran), a solo exhibition at Dastan’s Basement (“Travelogue”, 2016, Tehran) and numerous group shows.
Asal Peirovi (b. 1985, Sari, Mazandaran Province, Iran) is a graduate of Painting from Shahed University (BA, 2009) and Tehran Art University (MA, 2014). Moving to Tehran to study painting at university, she traveled back and forth to Sari, crossing Veresk bridge on the way every time. These travels became her inspiration to work on her two previous series, “Shahla’s Bridge” and “Travelogue”.
“Curtains” is the final series in the trilogy, continuing the artist’s previous two series. Years ago, Shahla, a relative of the artist, moved to the small village of Veresk (known for its famous bridge and surrounding mountains) from Sari (the largest city and capital of Mazandaran province). Shahla passed away before Asal was born and all that remain from her were photographs, oral memories and her will. In her first solo exhibition, “Shahla’s Bridge”, Asal Peirovi focused on structuring what remained from Shahla’s memories and photographs. In “Travelogue”, she was inspired by spaces, places, setting, the ephemeral soul of nature, and the unknown structures along the roads, especially around Veresk —where Shahla used to live.
The artist was inspired by “the bizarre death of Shahla and the dark shadow this secret cast beyond time” and hence she started her work on “Curtains” using an “aesthetic approach to life and death, human and nature, imagination and sacredness, and the strangeness of buildings created for the dead by living human beings”. Meanwhile, she has continued the use of raw fabric and a diverse set of materials to reach a refined technique and style.
The painting process in “Curtains” is a combination of study and improvisation. The artist has imagined memories from a lost person and created layered confabulations based on those memories and her observations during her travels. Shahla’s photographs and her will have penetrated those layers and mixed with the artist’s imagination. Thus, the painting process is bound to the experimental nature of the artistic approach, making each painting to continue life in a parallel context of time and space, in a realm created by the artist. By appropriating a location, the artist superimposes her artificial memories to it.
The title “Curtains” refers to the fragmented nature of memory and the physical properties of curtains as a means of ‘covering’ objects behind them. In this series, the curtains work like mountains on the way o the artist’s travels, covering whatever is behind them, and presenting a imaginary narrative of a hidden past.