Yashar Salahi | "Closer": Dastan's Basement

Dastan is pleased to announce the opening of Yashar Salahi’s solo exhibition titled “Closer” at Dastan’s Basement. The exhibition will be open for public viewing from August 18 through August 25, 2017. This is Yashar Salahi’s second solo exhibition at Dastan’s Basement. His works has been exhibited two solo exhibitions and several group shows. Additionally, he has illustrated five books and many of his illustrations and cartoons have been published in magazines and newspapers.
Yashar Salahi (b. 1978, Tehran, Iran) studied clinical psychology and works as a drawing artist, painter, cartoonist and illustrator in Tehran. His work draws inspiration from daily observations of people around him and an analytical perspective into his environment. He uses simple and accessible materials and tools to produce his works.
“Closer”, which has been created in the recent year, includes drawings using drawing pen, ink, acrylic paint, and metal wires, and a number of iron sculptures. “Closer” is a continuation of the artist’s previous series, “Macaroni” (2015). In the previous series, Yashar Salahi had focused on busy crowds, full of characters, but in “Closer” he has focused on each one of these characters and their individuality. Thus, in some of the works which have been created using freeform lines painted with acrylic paint and ink, the artist has looked at facial elements in isolation, seeking to bring out what he calls their “preoccupations".
Eleven years ago, after losing his father, Yashar Salahi felt a deep loneliness in the busy city of Tehran, and this led to his works that depict almost infinite numbers of figures and faces. During the recent year, to escape the noise of the metropolis, he moved to the suburbs: “Suddenly, after living in a populous neighborhood for years, I moved to a small apartment near Hasghtgerd in which only four or five people were living. Nevertheless, they were not very quiet either. In some of my recent works, these neighbors were among my subjects and I have used an ironical language and style in depicting facial expressions.”