DELGOSHA GALLERY

Delgosha Gallery opened in the spring of 2016 with the goal of supporting contemporary Iranian artistic and cultural potential. From the outset, the gallery has focused on representing new talents regardless of age or gender and on creating real opportunities for advancing and representing contemporary Iranian artists. To date the gallery has held 36 solo shows and nine group shows in the fields of painting, drawing, photography, installation, video and sound. Directed by Niloofar Abedi and managed by Shabahang Tayyari, both artists, Delgosha is making its mark through a programming that enshrines artistic practices close to poetry, deep-felt emotions and creative thinking.

“I Put A Spell On You”

Mohammad Ariyaei is a self-taught painter honing an involuntary rejection of discipline – discipline usually being what guides the artist to conform to popular taste. Ariyaei paints every inch of his papers and rarely leaves any breathing space, the mark of an artist who paints for self and not for others. He creates his own characters, inscribing allusive and enlightening poems by Saadi and Hafez on their bodies and turning them into our spectators judging us with their mysterious smiles. He acquaints us anew with lines and colours, drawing them as if they were as vital as other bodily organs, like the heart. We can hardly interpret his figures as ethnic. They asked to be discovered or to be revealed. Knowingly or not, Ariyaei engages his viewer in a fresh encounter with the recurrent existence of the ‘other’. His paintings are like a window into a parallel world, where people on opposite sides stand and appraise each other from the standpoint of their own principles. The artist grew up with his grandmother, an exorcist, a point that may contribute to a greater understanding of his practice.