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Lot Essay
Iranian artist Kourosh Shishegaran's paintings are evocative of contemporary hieroglyphics, combining hastily drawn scribbles with a graphical and technical style. A fundamental element in traditional Iranian painting, line has been reinvented by the great Iranian artists of the Modern art movement. Used to not only define the outlines of the images, lines are also used to describe the quality of delicacy, tenacity, and intricacy within. Sometimes the curves in these linear images play the role of light and shade and resemble calligraphic signs. Undoubtedly inspired by the linear fundamentals in classical Persian paintings, Shishegaran constructs texts and images devoid of rhetoric with corresponding lines and colours.
Shishegaran's painting is a uniquely distinct blend of abstract art and representation, using strong compositions and bright colours with intercepting tangled lines. His paintings have the conceptual strength and latitude of abstract painting, while maintaining a visually recognisable subject. Abstraction and figuration are the two combined poles of his artistic spectrum, the relationship between these two takes the shape of a conscious dialectic. In this modern iconography, what one sees is chaos, which is not a transitory phenomenon, but rather an enduring situation.
The artist's style has roots in Iranian visual culture in which Persian calligraphy plays a key role. The painting's lines seem to turn 180 degrees in each twist of a stripe as if circling a hemisphere. Shishegaran intensifies this vision of volume by grouping various tones in different layers, while filling the underlying surface. His paintings appear to struggle between representation and abstraction, maintaining their identity as a completely modern creation and always remaining in a flat space, avoiding any perspective projection. The figure emerging in such atmosphere lacks any emotional and psychological effect, as if it is indicative of form and abstraction rather than any humane narratives.
In the present work, the layout of the picture is achieved along the breadth of the canvas. The portrait, a reoccurring leitmotif in most of Shishegaran's paintings, is located on the golden section of the canvas. To maintain the balance, Shishegaran places an upside-down shadow of the portrait in the centre in a symmetrical position. This shadow is formed by bright grey tones. Surfaces of deep yellow appear on both ends of the canvas to complement the colour balance of this modern masterpiece. Stripes and surfaces can be detected in some parts of the canvas, indicating the effort, attention and subtlety dedicated to this exclusive painting.
Shishegaran's painting is a uniquely distinct blend of abstract art and representation, using strong compositions and bright colours with intercepting tangled lines. His paintings have the conceptual strength and latitude of abstract painting, while maintaining a visually recognisable subject. Abstraction and figuration are the two combined poles of his artistic spectrum, the relationship between these two takes the shape of a conscious dialectic. In this modern iconography, what one sees is chaos, which is not a transitory phenomenon, but rather an enduring situation.
The artist's style has roots in Iranian visual culture in which Persian calligraphy plays a key role. The painting's lines seem to turn 180 degrees in each twist of a stripe as if circling a hemisphere. Shishegaran intensifies this vision of volume by grouping various tones in different layers, while filling the underlying surface. His paintings appear to struggle between representation and abstraction, maintaining their identity as a completely modern creation and always remaining in a flat space, avoiding any perspective projection. The figure emerging in such atmosphere lacks any emotional and psychological effect, as if it is indicative of form and abstraction rather than any humane narratives.
In the present work, the layout of the picture is achieved along the breadth of the canvas. The portrait, a reoccurring leitmotif in most of Shishegaran's paintings, is located on the golden section of the canvas. To maintain the balance, Shishegaran places an upside-down shadow of the portrait in the centre in a symmetrical position. This shadow is formed by bright grey tones. Surfaces of deep yellow appear on both ends of the canvas to complement the colour balance of this modern masterpiece. Stripes and surfaces can be detected in some parts of the canvas, indicating the effort, attention and subtlety dedicated to this exclusive painting.