30 May - 30 Jul 14
TalkCloud is a cross-disciplinary project that includes lightbox sculptures, drawings and video (currently in production). The project was exhibited earlier this year at Niavaran Cultural Centre in Tehran and narrative gallery in London. The project's conceptual core is the multifaceted and multilayered relationship between art and power-holding systems in Iran and elsewhere. This relationship has been a longstanding subject of artistic enquiry for Bakhshi. In this new body of work he is looking into the very origins of the notion of so-called political engagement in art. But it is not just political power that Bakhshi is interested in. He is equally concerned with the interaction between art and capital, another stakeholder in this rivalry for authority.
The lightbox sculptures formally recall traditional Persian calligraphy, but, instead of famous verses of poetry, they reference well-known phrases that comment on the social role of art. The quotes include expressions by the leaders of the Iranian Islamic and Russian Bolshevik revolutions – Khomeini and Lenin – alongside those by the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the ideologue of the 'artistic engagement' and Social Realism, Anatoliy Lunacharsky, as well as Andy Warhol.
The contrast between the content of the phrases, which call attention to a social role of art, and their presentation in the shape of embellished ornament, creates a conceptually charged paradox. At the same time, the diverse industrial materials used to produce the works underline Bakhshi's fascination with the brutal aesthetics and materiality of Arte Povera.
The eight-panel installation My Land, Meridian …° - …°, orbit …° – …°, a reference to Yasna, Hat 46 was shown for the first time in 2004. It was subsequently reworked in 2013, when an iron frame with the inscribed quote from Yasna and the exact geographical coordinates was added to each panel. The eight panels represent eight parts of the current border of Iran and refer to the areas where the important battles and significant conflicts took place throughout the history. The events that transformed the country, that divided the perception of history to 'before' and 'after'.
The quote from Zarathustra, in this context, points out to another layer of meaning. It references the nostalgic, sentimental relationship one has with the past and ones own homeland. The work puts the discussion around the social role of art into a wider, historical and philosophical perspective.
The drawing series Hard copy is an ongoing project that the artist started in 2012. These digital drawings, made using coloured ink, reference familiar propaganda iconography that glorifies martyrs in the Iran-Iraq war. Bakhshi transforms them into simple, childlike drawings, using formal alterations to trigger conceptual metamorphoses. He takes these images out of their charged context, the detached realm of 'heroic propaganda', and turns them into schematic, nearly abstract graphic symbols.