Artissima 2021: +2

 +2 is pleased to present a group presentation of works by Asal Peirovi, Bita Fayyazi, Fereydoun Ave, Maryam Eivazi, Mohammad Piryaee and Seroj Barseghian titled “Diversity & Poetic Narrative”. With their individual styles, they have explored different paths of contemporary Iranian art in their wake.

Asal Peirovi (b. 1985, Sari, Mazandaran Province, Iran) is a graduate of Painting from Shahed University (BA, 2009) and Tehran Art University (MA, 2014). Her work has been featured in two solo exhibitions at Dastan’s Basement, including “Curtains” (2018) and “Travelogue” (2016), a solo exhibition at Shirin Art Gallery titled “Shahla’s Bridge” (2014) and numerous group shows. In her work, she uses a wide variety of techniques and focuses on themes such as memory, travel, scenography, and geometry. Recently, her work was included in The Future (2020- 2021), an online exhibition presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch.

Bita Fayyazi (b. 1962, Tehran) lives and works in Tehran. Rather than a sculptor, installation artist or ceramicist, engaged in some mystic relationship with her materials, Fayyazi is an artist who works within a more performative and markedly social practice. Beginning in mid 1990s, her artistic interventions challenged the official definitions of art that were often circulated in Tehran at that time. Fayyazi struggled to show her work amidst an atmosphere of stuffy traditionalism, academicism, and the influx of 1990s conceptual art from abroad. She successfully entered 2000 pieces of ceramic cockroaches into Tehran’s 6th Biennial of Contemporary Ceramic Art, despite an attempt by several members of the committee to oust her work from the show. She cast and fired terracotta dogs (Road Kill, 1998), modelled on dead dogs found on the highways in Tehran, and then placed her works on the streets around the city, much to the consternation of onlookers. Each of Fayyazi’s work has its roots in a form of participative social sculpture of gathering whatever materials are readily available. She also brings together artists and non- artistically inclined collaborators who can wrap and entwine, paint and cast. She reconstitutes the energies of a multitude of people toward an uncertain result. The final object becomes less important than the process – the collective doing, and the love of doing – that preceded its creation. In addition to bringing her work to the streets and abandoned buildings of Tehran, Fayyazi has also presented major installations and performances internationally. She participated in the Iranian Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and has exhibited at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2016), Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2008 and 2010), the Museum of Modern Art, Freiburg (2007) and the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (2008), among others.

Fereydoun Ave (b. 1945, Tehran, Iran) is one of the most influential individuals in Iranian contemporary art and his prolific efforts have taken diverse aspects. He received his BA in Applied Arts for Theatre from Arizona State University, studied film at New York University, and studied at the University of Seven Seas (aka Semester at Sea). During his career, which spans over five decades, he has successfully taken many different roles including artist, designer, art director, collector, curator, gallerist and art patron. His artworks have been featured in many solo exhibitions along with hundreds of group shows in galleries and museums all around the world. As well as being purchased by many notable private collectors, Ave’s work has been acquired by prestigious art institutions including The British Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Los Angles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Cy Twombly Foundation and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA).

Maryam Eivazi (b. 1980, Tehran, Iran) has a BA in painting, an MA in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage and an MA in Visual Arts from the Azad University of Art and Architecture (Tehran, Iran) and Academy of Fine Arts (Bologna, Italy). In her work, Maryam Eivazi strives to show a world that she feels and touches. She believes every color has its own message and this fascination for colors is evident in her paintings. Maryam Eivazi currently lives and works in Milan (Italy and Tehran (Iran).

Mohammad Piryaee (b. 1984, Qom, Iran) studied his Bachelor’s in Handicrafts at Kashan University and Master’s in Painting at Azad University, Tehran Central Branch. The work of Mohammad Piryaee, on several layers, includes irony and intertextuality, both of which reflect and freeze the repetitive fate of making and unmaking –building and burning— into the essence of materiality. The three predestined parameters of climate, heredity and genome, all influence the artist.

Seroj Barseghian (b. 1953, Isfahan, Iran) is a graduate of University of Tehran's Faculty of Fine Arts. Throughout his studies and experiments, he has believed that "strips - in addition to line, shape, space, value, form, texture, and color- can be a basic element in art." Seroj Barseghian states that "these strips can become an alternative opportunity to develop human imagination and visualization".