Abstract works by Amin Aghaei, Iranian cartoonist, illustrator and painter, is underway at Aun Gallery.
The collection titled ‘I’m Looking at You Through the Door Crack’ features 10 acrylic paintings and an accompanying video art, created in 2014, Honaronline reported.
Abstract art is a 20th century trend in painting and sculpture, which seeks to break away from traditional representation of physical objects. It explores the relationships of forms and colors, whereas more traditional art represents the world in recognizable images. It uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition that may exist “with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.”
Aghaei’s abstract collection is influenced by the 1980-88 Iran–Iraq war. “If you live in a war-stricken area, you will find the traces of battle everywhere,” he said, explaining about the pictures. The artist was inspired by the idea in the collection and his creativity features “the psychic damages on people on the war-front”.
The title suggests audiences standing behind a door and looking at people’s everyday life through the cracks. “This is a fragmented view symbolizing fighters’ souls affected by war.”
There are three portraits among the pictures which “illustrate real people directly affected, my mother, my friend Nima and myself,” Aghaei said. Looking from a reasonable distance, one can only see blobs, but as one draws closer, the characters gradually emerge.
Displays Abroad
Three pictures in his collection shown recently in Brazil, got a positive feedback and also two other abstract works are being featured in the Venice Biennale.
Amin Aghaei was not born in his hometown Khorramshahr, and displacement due to the war saw his birth in 1982 in Isfahan.
He spent his childhood in Isfahan, Yazdanshahr, Najaf Abad, Naft Sefid, etc. After nearly four years of migration and homelessness due to the war, his family chose to live in Ahvaz.
He views the social, political and even environmental problems in his works with a critical and thought-provoking look. The same reason has made his work a resource for semiotic analysis of social history of Iran in the past years.
He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in art at Tehran University. He has held several solo exhibitions such as ‘On the Karun River Bank’ at Aun Gallery (2013) and his works have been featured at Jewelry Museum in Kremnica, Slovakia, and Pabianika Gallery in Poland (2012). His group exhibitions include Iran & Rio at Largo Gallery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2013), ‘Nowruz 93’ at Aun Gallery (2013), ‘50 years of Journalism’ in Paris (2010) and many others.
Aghaei’s collections have won the first prize of Humor Festival Piracicaba in Brazil (2012), the second place at Satyrykon Festival in Poland (2010), excellence prize at Yumiuri Shimbun News Paper in Japan (2006) and a lot more.
The exhibition will run through May 27 at Aun Gallery in Vanak Sq. Tehran.
