ArteEast is very excited to present the second installment of our series featuring historical modernisms in the Middle East, guest curated by Hengameh Fouladvand with assistance from Sharon Parker. Mohammad Ehsai was one of the leaders of modern calligraphy in Iran, producing many paintings, murals, and graphic designs that are eminent examples of "Naghashi Khat" – (modernist) calligraphic painting. Ehsai's painterly manipulation of calligraphic forms of Persian and Islamic/Arabic calligraphy places him at the intersection of those traditions, the Bauhaus School, the Swiss International Typographic Style, and abstract modernism in general. As an educator, he is known for his influence on generations of Iranian art students, such as Golnaz Fathi, who we featured in the Virtual Gallery in October 2005. Although a revered figure in the Iranian art scene for many decades, his works have only recently garnered the significant international attention they deserve. This exhibition provides a comprehensive view of his work, and essays by Hengameh Fouladvand and Massoud Mansouri situate it within the context of his internationalist modernist inquiry rooted in Islamic art and the Iranian art scene.
The Virtual Gallery launches its series of exhibitions exploring the history of modern art in the Middle East with Saloua Raouda Choucair. Born in Beirut in 1916, Raouda Choucair has devoted her career to rethinking art as a modernizing, civilizing, beautifying project and to applying Islamic aesthetics and mathematics to everyday experiences. Her sculptures combine a sense of contemporary global time and scientific discoveries with Sufic insights into human existence. Easily assimilated to abstract geometricism, her work has not been understood at home or abroad through its own terms…
ArteEast continues to bring you the best of the Beirut art scene with its fall 2007 Virtual Gallery exhibition featuring the work of painter Flavia Codsi. Codsi redefines realism and modernism by painting classic subjects in ways that shake up typical art historical chronologies and preconceived notions of contemporary Lebanese art. Her paintings of fruit and figures are far from straightforward portrayals of “reality” but rather investigations into what constitutes reality in a besieged country. Her work captures tensions between the seen and unseen, the particular and the universal, between pleasure and fear, candor and constraint. Viewers will also find comments on the body, gender, art world politics and history, and war. Codsi’s work has garnered prestigious prizes in Lebanon, and ArteEast is pleased to bring her work to new audiences.
ArteEast is especially pleased to present the paintings, object art, and book art of Kareem Risan, an Iraqi artist currently living in exile in Syria. Risan’s work deals with Iraqi history and the contemporary state of the country. This exhibition includes entirely new works of book art entitled Baghdad Wall and Al-Mutanabi Street the latter named after the famous center of Baghdad’s intellectual life which is now a shadow of its former self after a bomb struck in March 2007, killing dozens. Risan’s works capture both Iraq’s rich history and the fate of that history in the current turmoil. From old wood to burned paper, from earth tones to bright red and dark grays and blacks, from ancient writing to charred remnants of Arabic print matter, these works act as artistic witnesses to what has happened, and they invite the viewer to experience Iraq visually and materially. The paintings are also in conversation with the history of Arab and Iraqi modernism – a history which is little known outside the Middle East despite its tremendous importance among art communities in the region.
ArteEast introduces the delicately spiritual installations and sculptures of Younes Rahmoun. This selection of works highlights Rahmoun’s ability to incite visceral and humbling reactions from his viewers. Rahmoun engages within an Islamic context but is also intrigued by Sufi thought and practice. This duality results in the reverberation of repetition and meditation throughout his work. Rahmoun uses his imagination, a space he says is informed by religion, to create what he describes as “visually inconceivable dimensions.” Just as these works serve as a conduit to the universe and its Creator for Rahmoun, they also summon viewers to make the connection, even if for a brief moment. Younes Rahmoun lives and works in Tétouan, Morocco. Accompanying the exhibition are essays by Maymanah Farhat, Florence Renault and an interview by Abdellah Karroum.
