FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE!
STEEL AND SILK: COMIC REFLECTIONS KAMBIZ DERAMBAKHSH AND ARDESHIER MOHASSES December 10 – January 2, 2016 Opening Reception: Thursday, December 10, 6 - 8pm
! Shirin Gallery NY is pleased to present the exhibition Steel and Silk: Comic Reflections, featuring the work of Kambiz Derambakhsh and Ardeshir Mohasses. The exhibition unites Iran’s prominent cartoonist, Derambakhsh, and leading satirist, Mohasses, whose different styles have influenced decades of Iranian comic and satire. Derambakhsh and Mohasses’ drawings are together in dialogue to reflect on the struggles of Kambiz Derambaksh
oppressed life. The show features a range of both artists’ works, including pieces from the Ardeshir
Mohasses Trust. Criticality lingers at the center of these works, which explore social issues and individual predicament, through the comic lens. Kambiz Derambakhsh’s careful and clean cartoons are about wandering through an obscure space, where the subjects exist in a geographic void. They suggest a sense of universality as they question relationships between humans. In contrast, Ardeshir Mohasses’s works on paper allude to more specific events and figures, historical and contemporary, Eastern and Western. References to the Qajar era are presented as Surrealist satire. The exhibition shows several works by Derambakhsh, a skillful observer who, through sarcasm and jest, points to the flaws of society. His cartoons feature minimal, decisive lines, with an absence of detail and ornamentation.
Ardeshir Mohasses
Derambakhsh gives the simplest image, and the widest space to breathe. "My stories are short and are not going to take much time from you,” he writes. “Through minimum lines, a big concept can be transferred." A majority of Derambakhsh’s drawings are based on the loneliness and singularity of his illustrated figures. In this series, the subjects are drawn out of a lonely wander to face homogenous social systems. Derambakhsh masters the sarcastic cartoon by lingering between hysterical humor and hysterical fear.
Across from Derambakhsh’s drawings, Mohasess describes the experience of life in diaspora. The figures are constructed of energetic and caustic lines. In this selection of Mohasess’s works, the contemporary history of Iran falls in the form of a collage that narrates the revolution of 1979, adjacent to individual pieces that more broadly concern death. Mohasses, through the burdened, caricatured figures, whimsically reflects on the nature of revolution. ABO UT KAM BIZ DERAM BAKHSH Kambiz Derambakhsh, born in Iran in 1942, has produced work for four decades as a leading cartoonist, graphic designer, and illustrator. Derambakhsh has been the recipient of France’s highest decoration, the Order of Légion d’Honneur. He was also honored at 2008’s Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Competition in Istanbul. He has written and compiled a number of books, including the self-titled Kambiz, and Without Words, published in Italy and Iran, respectively. He has shown internationally at institutions such as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, Iran; Caricature & Cartoon Museum Basel, Switzerland; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Japan; Cartoon Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; and the Museum of Cartoon Art and Caricature, Warsaw, Poland. ABO UT ARDESHIR M O HASSES Ardeshir Mohasses, born in Iran in 1938, has established a career as a satirist for nearly six decades. Mohasses first published his work in 1951, and then, after studying both political science and law at the University of Tehran, he worked in the library of Iran’s housing ministry. In 1977, he moved to New York. His work has been published in multiple anthologies, and shown in several international institutions, including the 2008 retrospective at Asia Society in New York. He has also exhibited at Columbia University and The American Institute of Graphic Arts, both New York; the Persian Arts Foundation, Los Angeles; the Louvre and Musée d’Art Moderne, both Paris; Musée des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, France; the International Biennial of Illustrations, Tokyo, Japan; and international art fairs in Basel, Switzerland, and Dubai Modern, among many others. He died in New York in 2008. About the Ardeshir Mohassess Trust: The Ardeshir Mohassess trust, founded in New York, is an educational, cultural, and charity entity established to honor Mohassess’s works and execute his wishes. The trust seeks to sustain, expand, and protect the artist’s legacy, and to safeguard and promote his lifelong contributions to art. Sales of artwork and contributions from the public at large are put towards preserving the late artist’s collection and, as per Mohassess’s wishes, offering financial aid to ailing and disabled artists.
Shirin Gallery NY is a contemporary art gallery and platform for curatorial and educational activities that seek to foster international cultural exchange. Originally established in Tehran in 2005, the gallery opened a New York space in 2013 in Chelsea’s gallery district. The New York space furthers Shirin Gallery’s commitment to exhibiting works that push the boundaries of contemporary art, as well as international perceptions of the Middle East. www.shiringalleryny.com | info@shiringalleryny.com | 511 W 25th St, Suite 507, New York, NY, 10001 | +1 (212) 242 4684
Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 2005, marker on paper, 23 ½ x 17 ½ in
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 2005, marker on paper, 16 Âź x 14 in
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 2004, marker on paper, 17 ½ x 23 in, 44 ½ x 58 ½ cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 2005, marker on paper, 17 ½ x 23 in, 44 ½ x 58 ½ cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 2005, marker on paper, 23 ½ x 17 ½ in
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1996, mixed media on paper, 13 ½ x 16 ½ in, 34 x 42 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1995, mixed media on paper, 13 ½ x 16 ½ in, 34 x 42 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1996, mixed media on paper, 13 ½ x 16 ½ in, 32 x 42 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1994, mixed media on paper, 13 ½ x 16 ½ in, 32 x 42 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1996, mixed media on paper, 13 ½ x 16 ½ in, 32 x 42 cm www.shiringalleryny.com | info@shiringalleryny.com | 511 W 25th St, Suite 507, New York, NY, 10001 | +1 (212) 242 4684
Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1986, mixed media on paper, 7 ½ x 10 in
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1985, mixed media on paper, 8 ½ x 11 in, 21 ½ x 28 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1986, mixed media on paper, 8 ½ x 11 in
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1986, mixed media on paper, 10 x 7 ½ in, 25 ½ x 19 cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1985, mixed media on paper, 7 ½ x 10 in, 19 x 25 ½ cm
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Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1986, mixed media on paper, 4 ½ x 6 in www.shiringalleryny.com | info@shiringalleryny.com | 511 W 25th St, Suite 507, New York, NY, 10001 | +1 (212) 242 4684
Ardeshir Mohasses Untitled, 1988, mixed media on paper, 28 x 31 in, 71 x 79 cm
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THE NEW YORK TIMES May 30, 2008 ART REVIEW Life in Iran, Etched With Suspicion and Humor By KAREN ROSENBERG Decades before Marjane Satrapi drew the first frame of her celebrated comic book memoir “Persepolis,” the Iranian satirist Ardeshir Mohassess, now 69, was making black-and-white drawings whose blend of humor and reportage made him a cult figure for artists and intellectuals in his country. With rich allusions to Persian miniatures, Western artists like Goya and episodes in Iranian history, Mr. Mohassess has depicted life in Iran before, during and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The drawings have a fanciful yet descriptive line quality, comically exaggerating facial expressions while giving full weight to bullet holes and severed limbs. Some of the meanings may be lost on American viewers, but the artist’s deep suspicion of religious and political authority comes across clearly. Now some 70 of Mr. Mohassess’s works are on view at the Asia Society and Museum in a show, “Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran,” assembled by the artists Shirin Neshat and Nicky Nodjoumi. The timing could hardly be better, given Iran’s high profile in the American political debate during this presidential election year. Ms. Neshat and Mr. Nodjoumi, who were born in Iran and now work in New York, first saw Mr. Mohassess’s drawings in Iranian newspapers before the revolution. They say they felt the need to reintroduce him to Western viewers after the Museum of Modern Art mounted the 2006 exhibition “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking,” a group show that presented Ms. Neshat, Ms. Satrapi and other artists from the Islamic world alongside the Americans Bill Viola and Mike Kelley and was widely criticized for making superficial connections between cultures. Ms. Neshat, whose films and photographs explore women’s place in Iranian society, is particularly fond of Mr. Mohassess’s drawings of women. In an untitled work from 1978, a rose grows out of a chador; the end of the stem disappears into the opening where the woman’s face should be. A similarly arresting image, “Mother’s Day” (about 1980), features a thorny branch in place of the flower. Both works suggest resistance to the muffling of women’s voices. Mr. Nodjoumi, a painter who works in a figurative style with plenty of political symbolism, says he admires the broad visual and historical literacy of Mr. Mohassess’s satire, in which references to Daumier and the Qajar dynasty are equally at home. Unlike a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammed, Mr. Mohassess’s drawings have not inspired any riots. But they did attract the attention of the shah’s dreaded secret police in the 1970s. After receiving several warnings from the Iranian
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authorities Mr. Mohassess relocated to New York in 1976. The move was intended to be temporary, but the revolution of 1979 prompted a change of plans. The exhibition effectively begins with the series “Life in Iran” (1976-78). This group of more than 30 drawings is ostensibly set in the Qajar dynasty (1833-1925), but it clearly satirizes the reign of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1941 to 1979). Royal figures in elaborate Qajar dress quash uprisings with acts of intimidation and brutality. Artists, writers, teachers and free thinkers are among the oppressed. Ironic captions — “The convict’s execution coincided with the king’s birthday ceremonies,” for example, or “Members of a birth control seminar take a memorial picture” — pick up where Mr. Mohassess’s pen leaves off. In one of the largest and most powerful works, a wedding has been interrupted by an oil truck crashing through the wall. The guests, some in chadors and others in Western clothing, seem to have been immobilized by this turn of events. The scene is farcical except for the bodies of the toppled bride and groom and the nooses dangling overhead. Mr. Mohassess often works from photographs, lending his scenes of executions and “accidents” a grim authenticity. In an interview in the small exhibition catalog he admits to collecting “photographs of murderers and murdered people, a habit I have had since I was 7 or 8 years old.” He also collects images from the Qajar period, a source for the feathered and jeweled headdresses and embroidered tunics worn by the loutish royals and lackeys in his art. Several drawings that Mr. Mohassess made after the revolution imbue single figures with disturbing symbolism. In “A Letter From Shiraz” (1982) a turbaned figure draws a picture of his own amputated feet; the upturned stumps of his legs serve as pedestals for them. The garden setting signifies “paradise on earth” in traditional Persian miniature painting; here it unites creation with self-mutilation. In the ’80s, after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Mohassess started creating collages from black-and-white photocopies of his earlier works, particularly those based on Qajar sources. He also adopted a simpler style, outlining clusters of small figures. In these works his pen, though shaky, depicts hangings and torture scenes in unnerving detail. Given that his work is found in newspapers and magazines as well as on gallery walls, Westerners might tend to think of Mr. Mohassess, in the simplest terms, as Iran’s answer to Saul Steinberg. His drawings have been published in The New York Times as well as in the Nation and Playboy. Yet they are more ambiguous than typical op-ed illustrations and more subtle than most political cartoons. In Mr. Mohassess’s works, the coded beauty of traditional Persian art comes face to face with the ugliness of successive autocratic regimes. “Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran” is on view through Aug. 3 at Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org.
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! Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2008
IRANIAN ILLUSTRATOR’S ELUSIVE EYE By Melik Kaylan A brief look at the first few images of the exhibition makes your heart sink. This will be rough going you think. Ink-on-paper drawings of bullet-pierced martyrs in robes demonstrating, crowd scenes of public hangings -- one long shrill cri de coeur against tyranny. Very important, no doubt. You could leave early. But you don't and you really shouldn't. A second glance and you quickly realize that the work rewards closer study. Take the 1978 drawing titled "Today's martyrs demonstrate in honor of tomorrow's martyrs." To the left stands a group of burning women in chadors with interchangeable Russian doll faces. The rising flames look decorative, exactly like peacock tails. About to enter the flames from the right are a band of 20 or so bulletholed men, some with mullah turbans. They approach like automatons, but the artist individuates the men carefully, as specific characters, possibly portraits. If the details are fully intentional, then the artist is a sly one. He's delivering a subtle critique of the martyrs too. The women die anonymously but decoratively, while the men are visible for posterity. And no one's complaining about their fate. This is deliberate selfmartyrdom, and the artist makes you feel uneasy about it with the subtlest of signs. The artist is Ardeshir Mohassess, the almost forgotten Iranian political illustrator still revered by a generation of shah-era Iranians because he pilloried the last shah's regime in situ -- and later because in exile he went on to chronicle the new order's worse brutality in foreign publications. A retrospective exhibition of his work, curated by the celebrated video-artist Shirin Neshat and her colleague Nicky Nodjoumi, both ethnic Iranians, is on view at the Asia Society in New York through Aug. 3. Mr. Mohassess was born in 1938. He has led a life almost as dramatic as his drawings. During the shah's time, he worked obliquely but unmistakably against the regime with baroque depictions of atrocities committed by the Qajars, the dynasty preceding the Pahlevis. Nobody doubted his real target, however, not least the shah himself, who is said to have personally interceded with the official censor to silence the satirist. After several warnings from the secret police, in 1976 Mr. Mohassess fled to exile in the U.S. He thought it would be temporary, but soon enough the mullahs took power and he never went back to Iran. In the mid-1980s he developed multiple sclerosis and struggled hard against the odds to keep working, at times resorting to collage, collaborating with others, ultimately paring his drawings down to caustic simulacrums. The Library of Congress had the foresight to collect his works dating back to his arrival in the U.S., and much of the show's first half comes from that collection. His last work on view dates from 2000. He lives alone in Greenwich Village but could not make the May 23 at the Asia Society due to faltering health. The opening began with a talk by the curators. Ms. Neshat delivered an impassioned introduction saying that Mr. Mohassess was, in her view, Iran's most important living artist. He had served as an inspiration to herself and to a whole generation of Iranian artists and intellectuals. Mr. Nodjoumi confessed that he had helped Mr. Mohassess with some of his collages. Over a hundred people, many from the well-heeled Iranian community, packed the gallery. The show divides into two halves, the years up to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the years of theocratic rule since. From 1971 there's a lush-robed headless figure, his head peering out between his feet, clear-eyed, bearded, his robe of whorls suggesting faces, ears or storms. In its exquisite draftsmanship, macabre and beautiful, one detects Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, even Aubrey Beardsley, a dense jangle of allusions. There's a great deal of dressing up both to inflict and to suffer cruelty. The victims in the drawings often look as over theatrical as their tormentors. A 1977 work shows a pyramid of blindfolded bullet-pierced mullahs, from the time when the shah was suppressing religious dissent. The composition suggests that the executed mullahs posed for a photograph. Are the victims a little too contented in a culture of martyrdom such as Iran's? In the catalog, the artist is quoted as saying that perhaps he sees both oppressors and oppressed as www.shiringalleryny.com | info@shiringalleryny.com | 511 W 25th St, Suite 507, New York, NY, 10001 | +1 (212) 242 4684
equally responsible. In such a culture, the drawings seem to show, roles could reverse at any moment; the garb will change, but the ritualized atrocities will continue -- as indeed happened with the revolution. Time and again you realize that the artist's graphic erudition is quite extraordinary, and not fully plumbed in the wall-blurbs or the catalog, which is probably what happens when fellow artists rather than scholars curate a show. The Qajar drawings echo old photos of British Raj hunt scenes. Others echo early Soviet scientific gatherings. The allusions surely mean something. Gradually, the drawings turn sparse, etiolated, as the MS takes its toll. By then, in his homeland the mullahs rule and they take their turn in the comedy of cruelty. The artist's eye never slackens or disappoints -- a tribute no doubt to the curators' selection. In the end, one thinks, Iranians should certainly take pride in having produced such a great artist, but they should take little comfort in his vision.
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ARDESHIR MOHASSES 1938–2008
Selected Solo Exhibitions 2008-“Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran,” Asia Society Museum, New York, US. 2008-Homa Gallery, Tehran, IR. 2007-Homa Gallery, Tehran, IR. 2006-Homa Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1993-“Open Secret,” Westbeth Gallery, New York, US. 1986-Persian Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, US. 1986-International Biennial of Illustrations, Tokyo, JP. 1983-Studio 369, Boston, US. 1978-Zand Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1976-Darisi Gallery, Shiraz, IR. 1976-Zand Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1975-Litho Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1975-Graham Gallery, New York, US. 1974-Columbia University, New York, US. 1972-Iran-America Society Cultural Center, Tehran, IR. 1971-Sayhoun Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1971-Municipal Club, Tehran, IR. 1969-Sayhoun Gallery, Tehran, IR. 1967-Qandriz Gallery, Tehran, IR. Selected Group Exhibitions 1980-“Politics and Arts: Ten Years of Graphic Commentary, 1970–1980-” The American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York, US. 1977-Hayden Zand Gallery, Washington D.C., US. 1976-The International Arts Fair, Basel, SZ. 1976-“Modern Iranian Arts,” Iran-America Society, Tehran, IR. 1974 “Drawings from The New York Times,” Louvre Museum, Paris, FR. 1973-“Drawings from The New York Times,” Musée des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, FR. 1971-Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, FR. 1964-Fourth Biennial Art Exhibit, Tehran, IR. 1962 Third Biennial Art Exhibit, Tehran, IR. 1960-Second Biennial Art Exhibit, Tehran, IR. 1958 First Biennial Art Exhibit, Tehran, IR. www.shiringalleryny.com | info@shiringalleryny.com | 511 W 25th St, Suite 507, New York, NY, 10001 | +1 (212) 242 4684