Soft Edge of the Blade Vol.3

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.

Andisheh Avini (b. 1974, New York) is an artist who uses painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, often incorporating the traditional craft of marquetry in his artistic practice.

Andisheh Avini explores the duality of his own identity by combining iconic images like Persian calligraphy, decorative motifs, and portraiture with occidental concepts of minimalism and abstraction. Avini's approach speaks to a larger globalized society of nomads, the displaced, and the wayfarer, reflecting a contemporary multicultural experience to which many can relate.

Homa Delvaray (b. 1980, Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian graphic designer and visual artist living and working in Tehran. Since earning a degree in Visual Communication from the University of Tehran (2006), she has extended her work across mediums, from installation to sculpture, textile art to artist books.

Her practice activates the overlap of graphic and stage design in a spatial framework. Her works, often presented as an installation of a group of objects, engage the architectural space using a combination of design and spatial strategies. A graphic designer by training, Delvaray employs the tools she has at her disposal to research and present what she observes as the paradoxical life within the dichotomies found in the life of contemporary Iranians. Her recent series investigates gender relations and how it has been formulated in mythological metaphors and tropes.

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.

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).