Monthly Archives: April 2014

Kamrooz Aram (1978) is a contemporary artist whose work explores the complicated relationship between traditional non-Western art and Western Modernism. His work uses iconography as well as abstraction, revealing the essential role that ornament played in the development of Modern art in the West. Taking floral motifs from Persian carpets, Aram repeatedly reconfigures them into painterly mediations resulting in images, always in a state of flux.

Aram received his master’s degree in Fine Arts from Columbia University in 2003. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured and reviewed widely in publications such as Art in America, Artforum.com, The New York Times, Asian Art Newspaper, The Village Voice and the arts and culture segment on BBC Persian: Tamasha. Aram’s recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Ornament for Indifferent Architecture, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2017); Recollections for a Room, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2016); Unstable Paintings for Anxious Interiors at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2014); Kamrooz Aram/Julie Weitz at The Suburban, Chicago, Illinois (2013). Current and upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition, Ancient Blue Ornament, at the Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia in January 2018, a two-person exhibition with the work of Anwar Jalal Shemza at the Hales Project Room, New York in January 2018, and FOCUS: Kamrooz Aram at The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas in March 2018.

Ebrahim Olfat (1979) is a calligrapher painter and a member of Calligraphers Association.

He has held a number of solo and group exhibitions and won a number of international prizes for his work

Neda Hadizadeh (1979) has an Art diploma in Painting, School of Fine Arts (1997) and  B. A. In Painting from Azad University (2003).

She had a solo exhibition “The sin is ours!“ in Mohsen Gallery (2011) and a  Painting exhibition in Elahe Gallery (2007)

Born in 1980, Rahimi grew up in Tehran where he currently resides. Mohammad was chosen as one of fourteen of Iran’s most notable painters in 2007 and travelled to Washington D.C. to display his art in the Meridian Exhibition.

He began pursuing his career as an artist starting at university where he studied painting. Rahimi’s works focus on an abstract expression and surrealist style. Well known in the Iranian art scene, Rahimi has exhibited extensively in Iran as well as across the globe including USA, UAE and South Korea.

Babak Rashvand (born 1980 in Tehran-Iran) is an Iranian painter/calligrapher educated at Tehran University-Faculty of Fine Arts. He receive his master degree in Visual Communication,in 2009.

He has held a number of solo exhibitions at Shirin Art Gallery Tehran,  8 Gallery, London,  Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran, Shokouh Art Gallery, Tehran.

A1One is the pseudonym of Karan Reshad (born 1981), an Iranian visual artist who pioneered graffiti and street art in Iran. His career as a street artist began in his hometown, Tehran. A1one grew up in Iran during a period of war and the Khatami reform era (1997-2005). A1one studied for 5 years at the Art and architecture university in Tehran. While still a student, he began using graffiti around the university campus, as a protest against student conditions. He was eventually expelled from the University after which his graffiti activities in the city of Tehran increased. A1one was the first person to start painting on the city walls. His name can be interpreted as “Alone” or “First One.” A1one started painting walls in the late 1990s. He is the pioneer of the urban art scene in Middle East. When he began, it was a time when nobody knew what graffiti was in his country. He had a very influential role in the rise of street art and stenciling within Iran.

By 2010, A1One was an established name within Tehran’s youth culture and a key figure in the emergence of Iranian street art/ A1one’s art world is dynamic and made of many different styles, from portraits to calligraphy and funky characters which he mostly uses for his stickers. A1one has been working on a distinctly Iranian style of calligraffiti, which is “a fusion of hip-hop graffiti and Persian typography.” His style is recognised across the Islamic graffiti world.

Mehdi Ghadyanloo (1981) is an Iranian painter. known for his utopian and philosophical paintings that interrogate universal human precepts such as fear, hope and loss. His work makes use of trompe-l’œil and shows the influence of Surrealism; he has been compared to Magritte. Through the portrayal of minimal heterotopic environments, surreal architectural arrangements, and the repeated use of symbolic elements such as stairs, balloons and aeroplanes, Ghadyanloo invites us to consider new realities and the shared universality of our existence. In 2006, on commission from the city of Tehran authorities, he started painting large-scale murals on bare walls in the city of Tehran; he has painted more than 100 of them. In 2015 he visited London for an exhibition of his “indoor” paintings, and painted murals there also, including one in Shoreditch.

Maryam Ghanbarian (1987) is an Iranian painter/calligrapher and has a post graduate degree in graphics  from the Faculty of Fine Arts, the University of Tehran, Iran.

Maryam is interested in combining Persian calligraphic forms and elements of nature to show the similarity and universality of both in her paintings. She has participated in several Solo and Group exhibitions including: Illuminating the Word, Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, London,2015. Grand Opening of Shirazi Art Gallery, Melbourne 2015, Opera Gallery, London 2013. Les Mots Devoiles, Geneva, 2012. Solo Exhibition in Shirin Gallery Tehran, 2013 and ProArt Gallery, Dubai 2015. She has won a number of awards including the special award in the first international visual arts festival of ECO (Global celebrations of Norooz).