Farrokh Mahdavi | "The Shaving" Portfolio: Electric Room 12/50

Dastan is pleased to display Farrokh Mahdavi’s portfolio, “The Shaving”, a collaboration between the artist and Rezvan Projects, at Electric Room from October 13 to 18, 2017.
“The Shaving” portfolio is based on a series of paintings* (2014 - 2016) by Farrokh Mahdavi in which he created more than 20 paintings on the concept of shaving. As he explains, the image of seeing himself in the mirror everyday, shaving his face in order to ignore his hair growing white, caused this banal act an obsession that was later transformed into a series of artworks.
While it might seem that Farrokh Mahdavi has repeated the same work over the course of two years by painting the same subject or the same compositions, this repetitiveness is exactly a central concept in the series: the process is not about repetition at all, but rather about being able to explore or examine a particular idea or issue in a progressively deeper and more meaningful way, and from a richer variety of perspectives.
Repetition, in a similar manner to rhythm, helps Farrokh Mahdavi create a sense of movement and tension within his bodies of work. In visual production, it is a recurrence of a particular line that challenges the public to slow down and take time to focus on a subject or concept.
Works in a series help us get to know an artist over time —understanding what is going on in their mind, what the issues they deal with are, and most importantly, what the message behind the works is. Created as a conclusion for “The Shaving” project, this portfolio highlights Farrokh Mahdavi’s paintings in a small-scale curated presentation. Created in 30 editions, each portfolio contains five original ‘Photo-Intaglio' prints and a unique painting mounted on paper.
* “The Big Shave”. Solo Exhibition of Works by Farrokh Mahdavi. Curated by Ali Bakhtiari. Dastan’s Basement. Tehran: November/December 2016.