Afshin Pirhashemi, the young ingenious experimentalist painter was born in 1974 in Tehran. He began painting in childhood and held his first exhibition when sixteen at Bamdad Gallery, Tehran, while simultaneously participating in a group exhibition at Seyhoon Gallery. His works do not find their way to any biennials inside the country until 2004 when he wins the juror’s award as well as the visitors’ prize for the best work, and in the following year, he wins the prize for ‘excellent work’ in the second Beijing international art biennial.
To this day Afshin Pirshami has held 15 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 50 group exhibitions inside and outside the country.

Refusing to cut his long hair he was forced to change high schools until he finally convinces his father whose library he preferred to school, to yield to his son’s wish to study arts, thereby obtaining his bachelor of arts in 2007 from Azad University, Tehran. Before that he received a grant from the Italian Ambassador to study at Rome Art Academy for two months.

His love for Mathematics and its unknown X can in itself explain why his paintings are polyptych, like mathematical equations ( X+Y=Z, for example), why women, this seemingly ‘unknown’ of the human history make his protagonists, also the name of one of his well-known collections, and why he worked solely in black and white, and even until the present time everything is apparently in black and white in his mind and he can express himself best in these two colors, which can be regarded as two absolutes, only meaningful in mathematics.

He learns painting basically by copying the works of well-known figures of the art-history, as he believes in this way one can intuitively grasp their lifelong work-experience as well. He ran a private art gallery, for several years in Tehran and in this way not only he acquaints himself with other artists and their artworks, but also learns the trade of art-business. He believes, “it is the artist who dictates the market prices by producing good works.

Pirhashemi is a figurative painter, a kind of figurative, and now characteristic, style associating Iranian Miniatures and Japanese painting on one hand, and Pop and Kitsch on the other. Although there is no prominent trace of his native conventional elements and clichés in his works, nevertheless they somehow reveal their Iranian origin, which Pirhashemi attributes to impressions he received by assiduously reading books on Iranian literature and history he found in abundance in his father’s library.

In an interview with Canvas he says: My canvas is like a film, like a movie. I am creating this person and she is like an actress, so she can take on all these scenarios, depending on my movie and my mood.” (1)

The main model of his paintings is his wife, originating from a childhood belief that the model of a painter should either by his wife, his love or Jesus Christ. (2) He came to know his wife Fatima in his first exhibition (1996) and married her two years later. “I get my energy from women’s secrets, the lives they never want to disclose. I don’t judge them but I just feel that women have elements which give me energy,” explains Pirhashemi. (3)

The conspicuous presence of women in his works makes him to be known as a feminist painter, while in relation to his BMW series with one of them sold at a high price at Bonhams, Pirhashemi says: This is in fact an antifeminist series. I felt feminists don’t do their job properly, I mean they rather spoil it. No doubt my feminist approach in this series was unconscious at the beginning, and only later became conscious. The BMW series is quite patriarchal and men will like them more. I totally destroyed the identity inferred from my previous works… this series is a protest to those who think they are helping women, and instead spoil the work. (4)

Pirhashemi’s paintings deals with complexities of contemporary life in Iran through a unique carefully controlled combination of realistic photo-paintings of Iranian figures and gothic imagination. In addition to his father’s high respect for the opposite sex, Botticelli’s women intensified his admiration for feminine form and psyche. Arrangement of figures on a plain white background not only furthers trompe l’oeil, but also grants a sense of monumentality and timelessness to them. The lack of extraneous detail, combined with keenly observed features on the figures concentrates attention solely on the protagonists and the relationships between them.

His success in Tehran’s sixth painting biennial followed by Beijing biennial opened his way to major art auctions. While the hammer on his works and thus his fame began to sound continuously louder, he has nevertheless been perseveringly working in his studio in Tehran, experiencing depressed gloomy states. “This fame has changed a lot of people around me, although I haven’t changed,” he tells Canvas. “They have changed, particularly after April 2010 Dubai Christie’s auction when the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the sale of his Rapture triptych for $554500.” (5)

Despite his significant accomplishments outside the country, Pirhashemi lives and works in Iran: “I can’t work outside Iran, there is no source of inspiration whatsoever elsewhere. If I’d left, it would feel as though I ceased to be an artist because it is the controversy that drives me. It is with such approach that he paints Jesus, Rasputin, Rumi, only because they are controversial figures within a religious context… “(6) The news of his achievements is published in local newspapers, but not his paintings due to their themes.

He regards the black and white period of his work representing the dark stage of his life and with a change in his outlook and introduction of colors to his works; he does not wish to go back to painting in black and white which now gives him strange emotions and an unfamiliar feeling.

His last solo exhibition which can be considered as an attempt to create a relationship between mystical texts and painting was held in 2009 in Homa Gallery, Tehran with the opening verse by Shams, Rumi’s Master, I do not see myself in you/In you I see another, decorating the exhibition catalogue. In an interview with Etemad Meli Newspaper, in reply to the question that his paintings are mystical, he says: “It was Mohammad Shamkhani who first pointed to the mystical feature of my work in 1998… since then whenever there was a spiritual art exhibition; my work went on the wall.

” (6) In the same interview he refers to a video-art produced by two young film-makers, Keyvan Alimohammadi and Omid Bonakdar on Pirhashemi’s paintings, together with a selection of Shams’ statements in early 80s and he uses their selection in the catalogue of the same exhibition, held after four years of absence on the national art scene, even though he performed two or three controversial projects each year as for example breaking sale records in art auctions.
His recent measure to launch Pirhashemi prize (Pprize, a sum of $10,000) for an annual national art competition initiated five years ago by Homa Gallery under the title “Selected New Generation” is an admirable gesture in supporting young visual artists

Pirhashemi’s characteristic approach, his continuous experimentation and his achievements while still going through the last years of his 30s promises an even more brilliant future for him.

-

Foote notes:

1. Interview with Canvas, Looking at you/Looking at me, Sept-Oct, 2010
2. Interview with Etemad Melli Newspaper, They think I am a Sufi, 23 Khordad 1388 (2009)
3. Canvas, ibid
4. Interview with Farhikhtegan, 20 Mehr 1388 (2009)
5. Canvas, ibid
6. Etemad Melli, ibid.