Fereidoun Ghaffari: In the Shadows. Mentored by Phong Bui

In the Shadows FEREIDOUN GHAFFARI

CUE Art Foundation 137 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001

IN THE SHADOWS Fereidoun Ghaffari

June 9th – July 9th, 2022 CUE Art Foundation Mentor: PHONG BUI Catalogue Essay: SINCLAIR SPRATLEY 1

Self portrait, 2021-2022 Oil on canvas 67 x 36 inches 2

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION CUE Art Foundation In the Shadows is a solo exhibition by Fereidoun Ghaffari, with curatorial mentorship from Phong Bui. The exhibition presents a series of selfportraits by the artist rendered in thickly layered and textured oil paint, from close ups of his face to full body paintings at scale. The works on view as part of In the Shadows represent only a small portion of Ghaffari’s ongoing series of self-portraits, which he began in 2006. In these paintings, stripped bare of any markers that might suggest a particular culture or time, Ghaffari – who was raised in Iran and is currently based in Brooklyn – resists the politicization of his art. For the artist, painting is “a process of digging into the inner self,” and a quest for intimacy and meaning that is universally human.

Through his repetitive and continuous process, Ghaffari uses painting as a way to consider the basic elements of humanity. Years in the making, In the Shadows is the debut exhibition of Ghaffari’s self-portraiture series and marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York – and the first time he invites a public audience to witness the outcomes of his private and solitary practice.

Having followed Ghaffari’s work in the past four years, mentor Phong Bui locates it within a Western art historical understanding of self-portraiture, from Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man to

Rembrandt’s lifetime practice of using himself as a subject; from Picasso’s cubist and surrealist representations of self to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.

Like these earlier works, Ghaffari’s selfportraits convey an evolution of the self over time, and are “predicated upon a necessity to engage in a mediation upon life’s experiences in totality, or to confront the deeper aspects of [oneself] from within.”

Unlike these historical examples, however, few of Ghaffari’s self-portraits presented as part of In the Shadows are considered by the artist to be finished.

Observes catalogue essayist Sinclair Spratley: “Ghaffari’s paintings reveal that the project of self-making is ever developing and changing; what seems like a stable self-image one day can look like a distorted, incorrect projection the next. In this way, Ghaffari refuses to be lockstep with other painting practices that permit easy access to the work’s content or internal logic, rather challenging the viewer to sit uncomfortably with confrontation.

An encounter with such rawness and vulnerability brings the self-making project of the work into fuller view; while one may not ‘see’ themself in the work, they might begin to understand that they, too, are an iterative conglomeration of dozens of views, perspectives, and poses that might, one day, add up to a singular project.” ○ 3

ARTIST STATEMENT Fereidoun Ghaffari Painting is a tool and an activity I use to contemplate the many questions I have about the basic elements of humanity. Since 2006, I have been actively using myself as a subject for my paintings. I live and paint in the same space, and the paintings are a constant presence in my daily life. I work on them regularly within this context, often beginning in the evenings and continuing late into the night.

particular culture, society, history, or ethics. The space surrounding the subject is also void of any visual markers or cues. It is simply an undefined space.

I seek, through this process and this work, to get closer to revealing the elusive underlay, the core of humanity, which I believe is something that resonates with – and exists within – all of us. ◔

When painting myself, I don’t use any references or photographs – only a mirror to see my reflection.

Direct observation and immediate execution are important to my process. I respond to an intense and focused examination of myself with the act of painting in the moment. This process allows me to transform my observations and feelings into paintings in a way that feels authentic and unencumbered.

Through the paintings presented in this exhibition, I am in search of a privacy and intimacy that allows me to delve into my inner self. In my paintings, the subject is stripped of all superficial associations, such as clothing or other items that may suggest a

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Fereidoun Ghaffari in his studio, 2022, courtesy of the artist

FEREIDOUN GHAFFARI was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied painting at the University of Art in Tehran, earning a BFA in 1998 and an MFA in 2002. In 2003, he was accepted as a guest student for a special studies program at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He returned to Tehran in 2004 and taught in universities there until 2006, when he moved to New York and enrolled in the New York Academy of Art, attaining his second MFA in painting in 2008.

In 2013, Ghaffari had a solo show of self-portraits at the Tarahan-Azad Gallery in Tehran. Group exhibitions include EDGE (Emkan Gallery,

Self portrait, 2015-2016 Oil on canvas 16 x 21 inches

Tehran – 2018); In Between, Contemporary Iranian Art, curated

by Shahram Karimi (MANA Contemporary, Jersey City – 2017); VISAGE: Image of Self, curated by Fereydoun Ave (O Gallery, Tehran – 2016); and SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence, curated by Filippo Fossati (National Museum Academy of Fine Arts, New York – 2015).

Ghaffari’s awards include grants from the Leslie T. Posey and Frances U. Posey Foundation (Sarasota, Florida – 2008); The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Montreal, Canada – 2003); and First Prize at the Fifth Biennial of Contemporary Iranian Painting (Tehran – 2000). Ghaffari lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Self portrait, 2015-2017 Oil on canvas 14 x 17 inches 5

A FAMILY FROM WITHIN: FEREIDOUN GHAFFARI’S SELF PORTRAITS Phong Bui In context of world art history, the impulse that drives an artist to selfportraiture (a practice perhaps more pronounced in the West rather than the East, as the former is more invested in the uniqueness of the individual than the latter) has always been predicated upon a necessity either to engage in an external mediation upon life’s experiences in totality, or to confront the deeper aspects of themselves from within.

If we reflect upon Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man (c. 1433), thought to be the first self-portrait in the Western canon, we also recall various depictions of the genre over time;

for example: Albrecht Dürer’s SelfPortrait at Twenty-Eight (c. 1500), in which he portrayed himself as Christ; Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk (c. 1512), widely believed to be a rare portrait of the artist as an old and wise man; Rembrandt van Rijn’s ninety self-portraits (c. 16201669), which are legendary insofar as they are true testaments of his whole life, from having achieved early fame and wealth to late personal tragedy that led to bankruptcy; and Vincent van Gogh’s iconic Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (c. 1889), painted shortly after the infamous incident that caused the artist to cut off his right ear.

Left to right: Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man, c. 1433 Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight, c. 1500 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait, 1659 Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, c. 1889 6

We are also reminded of Pablo Picasso’s series of self-portraits; in addition to keeping his chronology similarly to that of Rembrandt’s, the artist legibly revealed the different phases of his stylistic evolution, be it impressionism, cubism, or surrealism. Frida Kahlo’s SelfPortrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (c. 1940), one among fifty-five of her self-portraits, remains a compelling vision that draws upon the artist’s physical suffering in a way that gives birth to the luminous flight of her imagination, creating a space that propagates higher planes of symbolism and self-truth.

Left to right: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, c. 1940 Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait, c. 1971

In Jean Genet’s powerful 1967 essay What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet, the poet sits on a train, observing an ordinary and poorly-dressed man. The man’s face reflects a certain gravity of life’s hardships and the inevitability of old age, and yet he radiates a familiar sense of dignity. In that instance, Genet sees himself through this old man and comes to realize the universal truth of humanity, inspiring his renewed understanding of the singular greatness of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits.

These portraits are unlike Rembrandt’s early ones, which represented a gifted, confident, and self-assured young artist (a similar ethos to how he approached commissioned portraits of the Dutch aristocracy). His early style persisted until the deaths of his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh, his son Titus, and his second wife Hendrickje Stoffels, among other misfortunes leading to bankruptcy near the end of his life.

Rembrandt came to see in himself failure and vulnerability. It was through the recognition of these powerful attributes in himself that he was able to share this universal truth: within human existence, however 7

unfortunate and painful it may be, there lies a nobility and shared compassion in the acceptance of mortality.

I have followed Fereidoun Ghaffari’s work for the past four years and have experienced the quiet yet steady growth of his unusual pursuit, which one might call admirably unfashionable in today’s visual lexicon. I see in him a similar ambition: painting himself naked, stripped bare of artificial precepts, and with a steady and intense gaze, Ghaffari’s self-portraits reveal an unrelenting desire by the artist to come close to the naked truth. I feel this exhibition of his portraits will inspire viewers to embrace the human condition that lies within all of us. However challenging they may appear to be at first, we each

Self portrait, 2007-2013 Oil on canvas 17 x 20 inches 8

come away with our own questions about what lies beneath our own understanding of mortality.

Lastly, as each painting requires endless hours of labor by the artist in order to mediate his observations of his own physiology – which may or may not represent his view of the world around him – Fereidoun’s body as a subject is no more and no less than the apple was for Cézanne.

D.H. Lawrence, in his first encounter with Cézanne’s painting, said, “Cézanne’s apple is like the moon.

There’s an unseen side.” Similarly, each of Ghaffari’s self-portraits contains an emotional energy that lies below, awaiting to break through the skin of the surface at any moment, if a prolonged viewing experience is given. ◑

Paul Cézanne, Apples, 1878

PHONG H. BUI is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Publisher/Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail, Rail Editions, River Rail, and Rail Curatorial Projects. He has organized more than sixty exhibitions since 2000, including an ongoing curatorial project called Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, which was exhibited as an official collateral event of the 2019 Venice Biennale Mare Nostrum; at Colby Museum in Waterville, Maine in the exhibition Occupy Colby; and in Singing in Unison, presented in ten galleries and art spaces across New York City in 2022. In 2014, Bui was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” by Brooklyn Magazine, and in 2015, the New York Observer dubbed him a “ringmaster” of the Kings County art world. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Curatorial Advisor at MoMA PS1. He has been a senior critic in the MFA programs at Yale, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania, and has taught graduate seminars in the MFA programs for Writing and Criticism and Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts.

Bui has received numerous awards, including the Jetté Award for Leadership in the Arts, Colby College Museum of Art (2019); The Lunder Fellowship, The Lunder Institute for American Art (2019); The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Prize in Fine Art Journalism (2017); an honorary doctorate from University of the Arts (2020); and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts (2021). Bui has served on the boards of many organizations, including the International Association of Art Critics (2007-2019), Anthology Film Archives, Artfare, Denniston Hill, Fountain House, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Mildred’s Lane, Monira Foundation, Second Shift Studio Space St. Paul, SharpeWalentas Studio Program, Studio in a School, the Miami Rail (20122018), and the Third Rail. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

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THE CONTOURS OF SELF-MAKING IN FEREIDOUN GHAFFARI’S PRACTICE Sinclair Spratley Gazing into one of several canvases, you are confronted with an intense stare. Your gaze is returned by a singular middle-aged man with a scruffy jawline and attentive eyes.

Each figure is rendered against an abstract backdrop that bears no visible markers. Standing, sitting, or kneeling before the viewer, the figure in the work demands that whoever looks must adjust to, or accept, his stark presence. Fereidoun Ghaffari’s self-portraits challenge the vulnerable relationship between artist, subject matter, and viewer. The intimacy of Ghaffari’s self-representations prompts a consideration of why and how we look at art. In this series of self-portraits, he presents a myriad of perspectives on his own corporeality. Ghaffari depicts himself in the nude, intensifying the genre of the artist’s self-portrait by laying himself bare to both the materiality of paint on canvas and the realm of representation.

At first glance, Ghaffari’s portraits follow the seemingly formulaic conventions of the artist’s portrait: the artist-as-subject, alone and denuded in an indeterminate, sparsely lit setting.

With no markers for time and place, the paintings feel sealed off, existing outside of time. Ghaffari creates an aura of enigma in his atmospheric treatment 12

of paint, resulting in a distance between viewer and art object that has largely diminished in other forms. He tests out a spectrum of poses: full and frontal presentations that are belied by a slight contrapposto, intricate and tense kneeling poses that recall the body language for rituals of solemnity and deference, and seated poses in which the artist is at his most contemplative.

Ghaffari tends towards the classical in his depictions of himself, though instead of valorizing the male body, he becomes the mature statesman through whose depiction we are able to access the psychic pressures of the body’s fallibility.

Ghaffari’s vacuum-like spaces give way to a sensual, almost haptic presence as one delves into the subtle and unobtrusive variations between the portraits. The surfaces of the canvases are built up by a tactile impasto, transmuting contours created by light into physical welts and peaks. The mottled, rugged surfaces invite the viewer into each painting materially rather than symbolically.

The appearance of Ghaffari’s hand at work acts as the imprint of the continuous labor and care that goes into each painting. Roughened areas of canvas denote spaces where the artist has chosen to refashion a limb

as he continues to work on and rework the paintings, never fully determining their completion. Places where Ghaffari has chosen to leave some appendages unfinished signify the limitations of selfrepresentation, and the barriers to fully realizing the totality of one’s being.

These self-portraits, made exclusively in Ghaffari’s home studio, are captured in an enigmatic, dimmed light that emphasizes dramatic, shadowed contours on the face, and ridges of the body, made more pronounced by the angularity of some of the artist’s poses. This lighting, along with the lifesized scale of the portraits, transform the works from paintings hanging on the wall to portals that allow for glimpses into what seems like a distant and secret place. The beholder thus turns from viewer into voyeur, as the psychological aspects of the work intermingle with the material qualities of the paint. From this intimate yet complicated and disquieting vantage point, one may not know how to position oneself in front of such confrontational work. Do you spend a long time contemplating its formal qualities, admiring Ghaffari’s brush strokes and adept use of lighting? Do you glance only briefly, taking in the work only so much as to respect the sheer power of its presence? How do

you take stock of the intimacy and empathy that the portraits demand?

While Ghaffari’s project is an intense and rigorous study of the self, it also demands that viewers contemplate their own relationship to the work. It is through this conundrum that even a viewer with the most assured sense of self can begin to explore and reconsider how their own identities and self-image are constructed.

Ghaffari’s intimate painted world is one aspect of his overall body of work.

Initially trained at the University of Art in Tehran, Iran, he first began as a teacher and working artist, creating still-lifes and portraits of family members through quiet, soft, and deft applications of paint. In 2006, he expatriated from Iran to the United States. While completing a second MFA at the New York Academy of Fine Arts, his practice transformed from outward facing to the introspective and selfreflexive self-portraits that he mainly produces today. One could imagine that this shift was prompted in part by Ghaffari’s transition to a new cultural context, one that is highly individualistic and politically divisive, as well by his alienation from his homeland and a resulting need to redefine (and perhaps resist) what it means to be an Iranian artist in this unfamiliar setting.

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Ghaffari’s series of self-portraits thus began in 2006 with smaller, bustlength paintings, then expanding in 2016 to a focus primarily on full-body portraits. His atelier training is clear in the progression of his work and in his attentiveness to line, contour, and tension. The formal challenges presented by the truncated selfportraits, located in the multiplicitous and deceptive nature of perception, become inexorable mysteries that Ghaffari works through again and again, subsuming a formalist approach to painting into his introspective and enigmatic exploration of himself.

The sense of timelessness in these works connects them to a longer tradition of artistic self exploration that can be located in the ever fascinating and elusive genre of artist’s self-portraits. From Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait that collapses self-representation into an icon, to the standard bearer found in the selfportraits of Rembrandt van Rijn, artists’ exploration of selfhood through painting has always opened up the possibility that painting operates at registers beyond the symbolic, revealing both the conceit and the specific properties of the medium. By stripping away all adornments and trappings, the use of nudity, like in Ghaffari’s work, scrambles the somber reflexiveness of the self-portrait into a vulnerable and confrontational encounter with the work’s creator. Ghaffari’s nude selfportraits operate similarly to those of Lucian Freud, usurping the artist-

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model formula in order to understand the emotional weight of transforming from subject to object. These selfportraits do not undo the binary nature of subject-object, but rather complicate it so much that an awareness of the artist’s own objectification is thwarted by the viewer’s sympathy with the subject. Through this, the artist’s selfportrait – and the nude in particular – carries an enormous psychic weight that cannot be avoided or diminished.

Ghaffari’s numerous self-portraits serve as a reminder of the oppositional operations of painting, a medium that acts at once as a mirror that can represent a spectrum of human internal life, and as a boundary between symbolic and physical worlds. In portraying the same subject repeatedly, Ghaffari’s paintings reveal that the project of self-making is ever developing and changing; what seems like a stable self-image one day can look like a distorted, incorrect projection the next. In this way, Ghaffari refuses to be lockstep with other painting practices that permit easy access to the work’s content or internal logic, rather challenging the viewer to sit uncomfortably with confrontation.

An encounter with such rawness and vulnerability brings the self-making project of the work into fuller view; while one may not “see” themself in the work, they might begin to understand that they, too, are an iterative conglomeration of dozens of views, perspectives, and poses that might, one day, add up to a singular project. ●

SINCLAIR SPRATLEY is an art historian and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Art History at Columbia University, where she studies American art and visual culture of the 20th century. She received an MA in Art History from the Williams College/ Clark Art Institute Graduate Program in Art History in 2020, and a BA in Art History from Fordham University.

Sinclair’s writing has been featured in various publications such as Art in America and Hyperallergic. She has served as a research assistant intern for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Catalogue Raisonné project and as a curatorial intern at the Williams College Museum of Art. Since 2020, she has been an instructor and curriculum developer for the Prep for Prep/Sotheby’s Summer Art Academy, an arts enrichment program for high school students in New York City. Researching and teaching art history drives her passion to create a more inclusive and equitable art world for everyone.

SARA REISMAN served as a mentor for this essay. Reisman is Chief Curator and Director of National Academician Affairs at the National Academy of Design. A curator, educator, and writer, she most recently served as the Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation (2014-2021), Director of NYC’s Percent for Art Program (2008-2014), Associate Dean of the School of Art at the Cooper Union (2008-2009), and Curatorial Consultant for Public Art at the Queens Museum (2008). Reisman has recently curated exhibitions at the National Arts Club (2022), PS122 Gallery (2022), the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery (2021), and Futura Gallery in Prague (2020).

She has been awarded residencies by Art Omi, Foundation for a Civil Society, Artis, CEC Artslink, Futura, and the Montello Foundation. Reisman has taught art history and contemporary art at the University of Pennsylvania, SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design, and the School of Visual Arts’ Curatorial Practice Master’s Program.

This text was written as part of the Art Critic Mentoring Program, a partnership between CUE and the AICA-USA (the US section of International Association of Art Critics). The program pairs emerging writers with art critic mentors to produce original essays on the work of artists exhibiting at CUE. Please visit www.aicausa.org or www.cueartfoundation.org to learn more about the program.

No part of this essay may be reproduced without prior consent from the author.

Lilly Wei is AICA’s coordinator for the program this season.

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Self portrait, 2018-2022 Oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches 16

Self portrait, 2021-2022 Oil on canvas 53 x 44 inches 17

ABOUT CUE ART FOUNDATION CUE Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works with and for emerging and underrecognized artists and art workers to create new opportunities and present varied perspectives in the arts. Through our gallery space and public programs, we foster the development of thought-provoking exhibitions and events, create avenues for mentorship, cultivate relationships amongst peers and the public, and facilitate the exchange of ideas.

Founded in 2003, CUE was established with the purpose of presenting a wide range of artist work from many different contexts. Since its inception, the organization has supported artists who experiment and take risks that challenge public perceptions, as well as those whose work has been less visible in commercial and institutional venues.

Exhibiting artists are selected through one of two methods: nomination by an established artist or selection via our annual open call. In line with CUE’s commitment to providing substantive professional development opportunities, curators and open call panelists also serve as mentors to the exhibiting artists, providing support throughout the process of developing each exhibition.

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Front cover: Self portrait, 2019-2022 Oil on canvas 64 x 36 inches

Inside back cover: Self portrait, 2021-2022 Oil on canvas 53 x 44 inches

Inside front cover: Self portrait, 2019-2022 Oil on canvas 64 x 36 inches

Back cover: Self portrait, 2019-2022 Oil on canvas 64 x 36 inches

All original artwork from In the Shadows © Fereidoun Ghaffari 20

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CUE Art Foundation 137 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001 22