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Exhibition Details

17 May 2019 - 24 June 2019

General Information

Date of Exhibition: 17 May 2019 - 24 June 2019

More about the exhibiition

Evoking the past in the present of Ghasem Hajizadeh’s paintings has no sign of regret for the times lost. The past, in his work, is devoid of the glories held by the royalty, the elite and the victorious. Familiar faces of his paintings are not the familiar faces they used to be. The memorable photographs of writers and poets do not represent a brilliant past. He does not impose the heavy burden of the heritage of the ancestors over our frail shoulders. His works do not evoke neither nostalgia nor grief of a longing for a forced absence from home, and there is no sign of an exaggerated megalomania of “Ah! what we used to be and what we are now!”

Then, what is it in his work that makes us ponder? Where does the wonder, and the occasional smile, over the incarnation of the soul of photography in the body of his paintings come from? Hajizadeh does not imitate the past and does not present to us pictures as they used to be. In his perspective the hierarchies and borders of the official culture dominating the outcast unofficial culture are annihilated in order to allow humor with history.

He wants to alter the viewer’s perspective of the past with his own. He captures the movements of the viewer’s eyes so that it neither skims over the surface of the photograph nor drowns in the depths of nostalgia. He deforms the past for us to allow us to smile at the dubious and uncertain historic images.

The historiography of Hajizadeh’s paintings reflects the history of a people who have never won: A dervish riding a cow; a despairing writer after a failed suicide; the geometric brain of the modernist poet; the defeated activist; people with ambiguous sexuality; lions staled on the canvas next to jolly-lady-suns; scenes from the everyday work of Iranians in the faraway past and souvenir photographs made inane by the artist’s sense of humor.

All these diverse images converge at one point and that is to evoke the spirit of the past with no regret of any kind for the past. The new collection is the retrospective of his work, with each and every one representing a part of his idea towards looking at history.

Ali Gholipour

Tehran, spring 2019

Artist

Ghasem Hajizadeh

Art Works

Ghasem Hajizadeh