AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH
REZA PANAHI
– PERSIAN ART –
Reza Panahi. Untitled #1. 2013. Mixed media on paper.110 x 165 cm. © Art Market Magazine
Gold List Award Artist Reza Panahi. © Art Market Magazine
Reza Panahi, was born in 1981.
He is painter who lives and works in Tehran, Iran, and mostly exhibits his work in Maryam Fasihi Harandi Gallery in that city.
Panahi graduated with honor from Tehran University and possesses an Art Diploma. He had Exhibited in Tehran Museum for Contemporary Art in April of 2001, and participated in the International Kunstmesse exhibition in München in 2015. In his resume, you can find the Iranian Prize for Plastic Arts, more than twenty group exhibitions around the world and eight solo exhibitions in Iran, Spain and Germany.
Reza Panahi. Untitled #2 2013. Mixed media on 120gr paper.110 x 165 cm © Art Market Magazine
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH
REZA PANAHI
– PERSIAN ART –
Reza Panahi. Untitled. 2015. Mixed media on 120gr paper. 135 x 210 cm © Art Market Magazine
Art Market: Thank you, Reza, for the interview. Let’s talk about your interesting, full of details and very colorful art.
Is there a symbolic meaning to it?
Reza Panahi: Thank you for the interview! I’m very honored. I see myself as a man of peace and friendship, and to me, art is a very powerful tool for achieving a peaceful life.
As I see it, drawing and painting are a language; a means of communication in the world of signs, with every visual sign having a particular meaning and function, that in addition to aesthetic values, possess a unique atmosphere that stems from the artist’s technique and performance.
The visual world I create depicts the metamorphosis of deconstruction and blending signs together. The resulting images have caused my technique to diverse in terms of instruments, which, in turn, produce a diversity of forms in my method of depiction. Such are forms in my work; these are everywhere, ranging from objective to the subjective.
My composition is rooted in Persian miniature and my personal experience and expression abilities.
Reza Panahi. Untitled. 2015. Mixed media on 120gr paper. 135 x 210 cm © Art Market Magazine
In that, elements and signs are painted in juxtaposition and are often placed on top of each other. The perspective is not one that ultimately leads the observer’s eyes to a single focal point; in Iranian painting, there is an equal amount of image in all four corners of the frame, without any signs of light and shadow. For instance, there is no night in my paintings. Light is daylight, where people are holding torches or lamps, and the viewer has to make out whether it’s nighttime or not. This room for imagination by our minds is rooted in a philosophical establishment that I have tried to blend with the basis of my work.
Fluidity in form and execution is rooted in fluidity of the mind and leads to a method of depictions that is contradictory and inconsistent in terms of views and meaning constituting the main components of postmodernism.
I try to represent these roots in the form of coded language.
The presence of suspense in the overall message of the piece, as well as the use of coded language, stem from life in a land that is conflictingly imperfect; where repressive reality has turned me away from the cruel social realities, toward isolation. In this country, structural protests are expressed as imaginary images.
In the matter of ART, I should note that I understand painting to be a medium. Take the explicit etchings of the tragedies of war, for instance. In addition to possessing artistic value, art serves as a media network for informing Europe about what is going on in Spain.
The emergence of high-speed mass media gave me the idea to change the News-bearing role in my artwork to portray a sense of chaos & disarray in an inward fashion, that is in line with the result of my work.
To sum up, I should point out that painting takes on the fundamental characteristics of the land where it’s created; in Iran, paintings have always portrayed a magical or decorative nature through motifs of illusion. I intend to keep that characteristic in my artwork.
Reza Panahi. Untitled. 2015. Mixed media on 120gr paper. 135 x 210 cm © Art Market Magazine
Art Market: What is your process of creation? What does it look like?
Reza Panahi: Well, first of all, I work very long hours, making several projects a day, sometimes simultaneously: drawing, painting and creating sketches in my sketchbook. The process… I do believe that my soul is moving my hand on the paper or canvas.
Art Market: Professionally, what’s your goal?
Reza Panahi: My dream is to make an animation book. In this book, my drawings and paintings will always have motion on paper.
Art Market: Can you choose one artwork that influenced you and one that you love the most?
Reza Panahi: I love all artworks by Caravaggio, especially David & Goliath.
email: rezpanahi@gmail.com
Facebook: reza.panahi.1217
