Zaal Art Gallery x Simine Paris: Group Presentation

Fereydoun Ave (b. 1945, Tehran, Iran) is an influential figure in Iranian contemporary art. He received his BA in Applied Arts for Theatre from Arizona State University (1964), studied Film at New York University (1969), and attended the University of Seven Seas (aka Semester at Sea, 1964). Over the past five decades, he has taken on many roles as an artist, designer, art director, collector, curator, gallerist, and art patron.

The art of Fereydoun Ave is a freehanded engagement with a personal ethos informed by more prominent cultural influences. He ceaselessly reflects on his relationship with age, myths, plants, elements, seasons, moods, and heredity. He takes inspiration from the art of Iran, which tends to use the entire canvas surface, and the Western penchant for minimalism, which leaves large swaths unattended. Fereydoun Ave's joint projects with artists, galleries (including Dastan), and institutions are an integral part of his practice, reflecting his role as a curator, gallerist, and collector.

Mehrdad Mohebali (b. 1960, Tehran, Iran) is a Tehran-based artist. He graduated in Painting from the University of Tehran.

In the works of Mehrdad Mohebali, usually done in large formats, people are executed in a manneristic fashion. His early surreal scenes gave way to portraits of familiar political figures and scenes from art history next to those of the painter and ordinary people. His use of intense colors, lighting, and the poses of his subjects imbues his works with affectations and distortions.

His work has been exhibited in solo and GROUP EXHIBITIONS in Iran and internationally; including at the Lajevardi Foundation in Tehran (2016), the 2015 Venice Biennale, the Salsali Private Museum in Dubai (2012), the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (2004 and 2001), and the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art (2002).

Farrokh Mahdavi (b. 1970, Tehran, Iran) taught himself painting before studying with master painters and cultivating his passion for the medium. He lives and works in Tehran.

Canvases of Farrokh Mahdavi can be distinguished through unique pinkish hues. His technique aims to defamiliarize the well-known facial elements in a face. The fleshy-pink color of the artist's figures allows the rendering of "a more general depiction of human beings devoid of stereotypes of gender and race."  The faces in Mahdavi’s work are reduced to features like the eyes or the lips, and the rest are covered by thick layers of pink paint, hinting at the emotional world of his characters. He tries to specify forms and conditions without directly depicting anything additional, as he believes it deviates from the main point.

Baktash Sarang Javanbakht (b. 1981, Tehran, Iran) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works between Paris and Tehran. He holds a B.A. in painting from Azad University, Tehran, Iran (2005); a D.N.S.E.P in Metal Sculpture from Haute Écoles des Arts du Rhin, HEAR (ESADS), Strasbourg, France (2012); and an M.A. from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France (2015).

Incorporating drawing and installation, Baktash Sarang confronts the complexities of humanity and contemporary life through a somber tone. His works often depict oppressed and trapped figures in relation to intricate, enclosed structures. With a bitterly futuristic perspective, he employs sarcasm to convey his subjective visions of utopia and dystopia.

Baktash Sarang has held several solo exhibitions in galleries in Iran and abroad, including AB-ANBAR Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2018); Galerie Jean-François Kaiser, Strasbourg, France (2016); Araan Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2013, 2014); AB Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland (2012); and Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2004, 2007, 2009). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including the International Architecture Biennale di Venezia (2018).

Bahareh Navabi (b. 1985, Tehran, Iran) received her BA and MFA from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France. She has also studied with Farideh Lashai, the renowned Iranian painter.

Navabi's works mix hyperrealistic portrait and figure drawings with an abstract form. Her practice centers on a woman's body and explores the potential of her picture planes. Each element in her work balances dark versus light tonalities and empty spaces against detailed drawings. Most consist of several layers of tracing paper stacked on each other

Dana Jafari (b. 1992, Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Tehran. She graduated with a BA in Sculpture from Tehran’s University of Art in 2018.

Her artistic career is quite entangled in itself/ is interwoven. Each of her series is a blueprint and a foundation that shapes the next series of work. This is also reflected in the series’ names ("The Bruised Wall of Valley,” “Inside the Wall,” and "In Front of the Back Wall"). Dana Jafari's works, influenced by her academic background in sculpture, constantly flow between three-dimensional and flat forms; her drawings and paintings expand the surface and frame in space, and her sculptures illustrate a two-dimensional surface.

She had her first solo, “The Bruised Wall of Valley,” at O Gallery, Tehran, in 2019. Her work has also been a part of the group show “In-Between,” exhibited at Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran, in 2016.