UNDERGROUND at Azad Gallery

UNDERGROUND
an exhibition by Hamed Sahihi and Samira Eskandarfar
Opening: Friday 9th of May 2008 , 4-8 pm
9-14 May 2008
4-8pm
Azad Art Gallery
No. 41,Salmas Sq, Golha Sq,Tehran

New poster printed in slik screen

Unofficial Methodology of Nationwide Census

100x70 cm, 2 color silk screen
Designed by Amirali Ghasemi
Printed at Dara Print Studio check their blog to see more posters link

Call for art the 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran

Urban Jealousy
the 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran
30th May - 6th July 2008
Curated by Serhat koksal and Amirali Ghasemi

Download the Application in WORD documents here (Choose Your Langugae)
Farsi, French, English and Turkish

Dead line: Monday 21st of April 2008

The theme of this biennial is URBAN JEALOUSY. A Jalousie * (“jealousy” in French) is a window that one can see through but not be seen; barriers that allow us to observe the world without being invited to the table. Iranian artists are given an understanding of what goes on in the world without being offered a single opportunity to communicate their thoughts—outside of our very own jalousie window: a rigid ethnic frame within an extremely politicized context.

Of all the huge urban areas around the world, Tehran stands out as a different kind of Megalopolis. It boasts one of the most dynamic art scenes in the Middle East even as the city itself deals with a rudimentary public transport system, an exploding population crisis, and an ever-increasing sprawl of mass housing; An unsightly city of experimental architecture that swallows entire villages and towns without offering them any sort of public services.

Despite its complicated urban situation—which according to experts has already spiraled out of control—artists’ societies in Tehran continue to hold numerous biennials in semi-tribal fashion. A great number of these events are government-sponsored projects whose outlook and also their premises can shift 180 degrees from one year to the next. Each community has its own set of ceremonies, as a result of which, any sense of solidarity among the artists is lost.

The Tehran Visual Arts Festival, The Calligraphy Biennial, The Sculpture Biennial, The Cartoon Biennial, The Painting Biennial of the Islamic World, The Graphic Design Biennial, The Children’s Books Illustration Biennial, The Painting Biennial, The Poster Biennial, The Poster Biennial of the Islamic World… the list is endless.

Although the legendary "TEHRAN BIENNIAL" goes back 50 years, not a single one of the above-mentioned events can be considered a biennial by prevailing and accepted international standards". An arts society recently published a call to boycott the upcoming Painting Biennial in order to demand a professionally curated exhibition, protesting the open call process and a “jury” they deemed unacceptable.

It seems impossible to have a proper Tehran biennial in Tehran, so our sprawling city and its elitist art scene remain excluded from the highly competitive art market in the region despite being surrounded from all sides by lucrative biennials and auctions. We may have great artists living and working in Iran, but we don’t have a chance to share the profits.

Tehran, as one may suppose, does not seem interested in presenting itself as a desirable destination for cultural tourism, by playing it ‘cool’ like other global cities, or scramble to be hip by coughing up the membership dues to be in the international art market.

So, to jumpstart the process, and after a long discussion with my friend, Serhat Koksal — a critic of the global biennialization process — we decided to curate a ‘mini’, on the move, Tehran biennial. To not only stop complaining about the current situation but to benefit from the advantages of it. An independent, low- budget, traveling exhibition which can be presented almost anywhere. We will travel like nomads, carrying artwork, objects, texts, and whatever, in a package no bigger than a medium-sized suitcase, preferably weighing less than 20 Kg., so it can be carried on any cheap flight.

Urban Jealousy will end its journey in May 2010,but Tehran’s Roaming Biennial will carry on.Feb 2008

“philosophers’ beds/bedding philosophers” by Gloria Zein

Do philosophers poud in bed? Or do they invent there great ideas about the world outside, just before falling asleep, covered with stakes of books and papers?

Philosophy is pure thought. Clean, abstract, bodyless.

Beds, on the contrary, are very specific. Our journey into the world starts in a bed, and it mostly ends there when we die. We relax our tired bodies, hide, sleep and dream in the bed. Here, it seems, we are the most reduced to our physical existence. The bed is our most personal place.

The German artist Gloria Zein has put these two worlds, the bed and philosophy, in a relationship: For more than two years she has interviewed international philosophers about their thoughts around the bed – in order to dedicate an individual object to each of them. Ten “beds” representing this ongoing investigation can now be viewed at the Iranian Artists’ Forum, alongside drawings, photographs and texts. Her inventions range from the metaphorical to the poetic and humorous.

We would like to cordially invite you to the opening of
“philosophers’ beds/bedding philosophers”

by Gloria Zein

Mirmiran Art Gallery at the Iranian Artists’ Forum
Sunday, March 9^th 2008
17:00 to 20:30
The artist as well as Simon Farid O’Liai, Iranian philosopher participating in Zein’s project, will be present at the opening.
The exhibition will run until March 13^th. Daily visiting hours 14:00 to 20:00.

Poster Designed by Amirali Ghasemi

The Dispersion

The Dispersion

An exhibition by Hamed Sahihi and Samira Eskandarfar
Mah Art Gallery
Nov. 10-20, 2007
Visiting Hours: 3-7 pm
No 89, Golestan Blvd. , Africa Ave. ,Tehran
TeleFax: 22045879

پراکنــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــدگی
نمایشگاهی از حامد صحیحی و سمیرا اسکندرفر

نگارخانه ماه
نوزدهم تا بیست ونهم آبان
ساعات بازدید: سه تا هفت عصر
تهران، خیابان آفریقا (جردن)، شماره هشتاد و نه

طراح پوستر: امیرعلی قاسمی
Poster Designed by Amirali Ghasemi

NEVER BEEN TO TEHRAN

NEVER BEEN TO TEHRAN
October 19 - November 16, 2007

(photo credits clockwise from top left: Sal Randolph, USA; Heidi Hove Pedersen, Denmark; Greg Halpern and Ahndraya Parlato, USA; Otto Von Busch, Sweden and Turkey; France Martin Krusche, Austria; Jon Rubin, USA; Keiko Tsuji, Japan; Iyallola Tillieu, Belgium)

EXHIBITION VENUES: Parkingallery, Tehran, Iran; Caravansarai, Istanbul, Turkey; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, USA; Media and Interdisciplinary Arts Center, Auckland, New Zealand; Koh-I-Noor, Copenhagen, Denmark; Mess Hall, Chicago, USA; Pittsburgh Cultural Trust (Downtown Electronic Jumbotron), Pittsburgh, USA; ; Embryosalon, Berlin, Germany; and live on the web at WWW.NeverBeenToTehran.COM

NEVER BEEN TO TEHRAN, organized by artist Jon Rubin and curator Andrea Grover, is a worldwide exhibition with 29 international participants who will be contributing photographs of what they imagine the city of Tehran to look like, to a universal photo-sharing website. The photographs will be streamed to each exhibition venue as a continuously evolving slideshow, with more photographs being uploaded daily throughout the exhibition. The participants will use a variety of research methods to imagine the culture, landscape, and people of Tehran, using only their primary city of residence as the location of their photographs.

Exhibition Description Imagine a city that you've only seen in reproductions or perhaps have merely heard about. A place, like many others, that only exists for you through indirect sources--the nightly news, hearsay, literature, magazines, movies, and the Internet. Using these secondhand clues as firsthand research materials, invited worldwide participants--who have Never Been to Tehran--will take photographs (from their home base) of what they imagine Tehran to look like. Contributors will upload their photos daily to an on-line photosharing site, which will be projected as a slideshow simultaneously in galleries and public spaces around the world (including Tehran). Anything that anyone might take a photograph of is fair game, just as long as it feels like Tehran.

For the international contributors to this exhibition, the task is to search through their daily lives for clues to a foreign place, for the possibility that somewhere else exists right under their noses and that, like some clunky form of astral projection, one can travel to other lands without leaving home. New information technologies are expanding the possibility of knowing a place to which you've never traveled. Hosts of amateur and commercial websites and podcasts about a given city, its economy, demographics, culture and subculture have opened the way for a new vernacular of representation.

As Tehran's image is regularly depicted in the dominant media, it is a compelling challenge for the participants in this exhibition to sift through the glut of images and information to cull out a personally constructed version of an unfamiliar place. For viewers in Tehran, the exhibition presents a chance to witness an unusual mirroring of their globally projected image, taken from the daily lives and environs of outsiders. Collectively, the artists and viewers of Never Been to Tehran will be charting a liminal space stuck somewhere between here and there that in our contemporary existence just might be home.

Participants: Dean Baldwin, Canada; Aideen Barry, Ireland; Cedric Bomford, Canada; Otto Von Busch, Sweden and Turkey; James Charlton, New Zealand; Sara Graham, Canada; Andrea Grover, USA; Deniz Gul, Turkey; Greg Halpern and Ahndraya Parlato, USA; Levin Haegele, England; Rumana Husain, Pakistan; Jun'ichiro Ishii, France; Martin Krusche, Austria; Rosie Lynch, Germany; Francesco Nonino, Italy; Elena Perlino, Italy; Heidi Hove Pedersen, Denmark; Sal Randolph, USA; Alia Rayya, Israel/Palestinian Territories; Jon Rubin, USA; Jakob Seibel, Germany; Iyallola Tillieu, Belgium; Keiko Tsuji, Japan; Lee Walton, USA; Lindsey White, USA; Christian Sievers, Germany; Zoe Strauss, USA

Parkingallery | screening : From the Fluxfilms Anthology (USA, 1966

Image: George Maciunas, Fluxmanifesto (1963)
Film screening: From the Fluxfilms Anthology (USA, 1966)
with an introduction by Ms. Media Farzin
Monday, 7-9 pm
at
Parkingallery
No.11, 4th Milad Alley,Milad street, Dadman Blvd. Farahzadi Blvd. Shahrak-e Gharb.Tehran
Tel: 88 57 97 27

Between 1965 and 1968, artist and designer George Maciunas put together
a collection of film loops that he called the "Fluxfilms Anthology." A
group of about 20 experimental shorts, they were intended to be
screened as films and as backgrounds to performances. Maciunas was the
organizer and driving force behind the artist collective known as
Fluxus. Their publications, performances, instruction works and
objects were mainly produced in the 1960s in New York, but included
events and collaborations in Europe and Japan.

"Fluxfilms, especially when taken in context with other Fluxus
performances, insisted on gradual deconstruction not only of the
various components of the cinematic apparatus, but of cinema itself.
After eliminating the projector, there is nothing left but the
screen.... With the traditional movie space eliminated, the viewer
'generates' his or her own screening situation.... Finally, the viewer
becomes producer."
- Tod Lippy, "Disappearing Act: the Radical Reductivism of Fluxus Film"