Sina Ghadaksaz & Milad Mousavi: Untitled Art Miami 2022

Dastan Gallery's Parallel Circuit is presenting two new collections by Sina Ghadaksaz and Milad Mousavi at Untitled Art 2022, booth A29. This is Parallel Circuit's second international presentation. Dastan's first appearance at the Fair was in 2017 with a curated booth titled “The Universal Pink” consisting of works by Sam Samiee, Farrokh Mahdavi, and Sadra Bani-Asadi. In the 2022 edition of the Fair, seven paintings by Milad Mousavi, whose main subjects are human figures, and six new works by Sina Ghadaksaz, who continues with the subject of his previous collection (“Sugar in the Basement”, 2022) will be on view. Dastan sees its participation in this edition of Untitled Art as an opportunity for young Iranian artists to share their lived experiences, especially at this juncture when the country is going through much soul-searching, redefining its relationship to power.

Having centered his previous collection on a non-human character called “Sugar”, Sina Ghadaksaz is expanding and building on Sugar’s place in the world. For Ghadaksaz, the title of the work is an inseparable part of its semiotics. His are usually humorous or cheeky. Works are comprised of sections placed next to each other, much like sampling in hip-hop music. A portion of a popular song may be familiar to the listener but as soon as it turns into a sampled track, it’s function changes and it turns into a multi-layered, autonomous track. In multi-sectional works, we arrive at a dialectical structure because of the tension between the two images. The simpler images function as an antithesis to a more complex one. Their synthesis results in a visual objectification – neither a painting nor a collage – it becomes a "thing", Ghadaksaz says. Both Sugar and the outcome of painting are thingified and the visual experience is spiked as if by dopamine coming from sugar.

Milad Mousavi is a social observer and responds to what happens in his surroundings. Each of his paintings relates a story that connects it to the larger society. Characters in Mousavi's paintings live in paralysis and uncertainty. Broken individuals (including the artist himself) in full-bodied casts are framed in constricted spaces where they have no room to move. Even in frames where individuals are next to each other, we can sense the tension between them. The artist's use of sharp colors as well as cramped spaces emphasizes anger and strong emotions. In one painting, a large, intertwined crowd appears to have been watching a wrestling match while assaying each other contentiously. Trying to free themselves of their anger and tension, characters in Mousavi's paintings are reinforcing them. Works in this exhibition were done before the recent protests in Iran. The artist has been daringly active in past few years in online platforms, creating emblematic works, among them "The Blue Girl" (2019) and "The Women of Enghelab Street" (2017, 2018) illustrations. All these works have gone viral.

Sina Ghadaksaz (b. 1992, Tabriz) works and lives in Tabriz. He studied Multimedia Arts at Tabriz University before completing his MFA in Art Studies at Tabriz University (2018). His works have appeared in two solo exhibitions at Dastan's Basement "Sugar in the Basement" (2022), "In Basement: A Spectacle" (2020) and in many group exhibitions, including "Representing Far from Near" (Sanati Museum, Kerman, Iran, 2019), "Temporal Misplacement" (Jorjani, 2017), and Shanghai's ART021 fair (2020).

Milad Mousavi (b. 1987, Tehran) studied Economics at Allameh Tabataba'i University. He has been painting professionally since 2012. He has held three solo exhibitions at Dastan’s Basement: "A Moon Shaped Artist" (2020), "Zanauschwitz" (2017), "Phish Phishy" (2015). His works have appeared in several group exhibitions, including "Polychromatic - Online Viewing", Daniel Raphael Gallery (2021), as well as Contemporary Istanbul (2014), Tir Art (2018), Art Dubai (2018), and Asia Now (2021) art fairs. A work of Mousavi was sold by Sotheby's in 2016. His works have been published in “Imago Mundi”, Luciano Benetton collection of Iranian artists, 2013 and in Mundial Magazine book for 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, June and July 2014.