LET'S GET LOST - LET THEM SEND OUT ALARMS VR 2.0

NOUVELLE VAGUE ARTSPACES - SOTOGRANDE

JANET RADY FINE ART - LONDON

NAVA CONTEMPORARY - SAN FRANCISCO

MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE - WASHINGTON DC

APRIL - JUNE 2020 & EXTENDED THRU 2021

VR LINK

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Originally opening on March 30th and running through May 13th 2020 - before being extended and included to the Middle East Institute's Fall 2020 Group Exhibit in Washington DC - the 'Let's Get Lost ( Let Them Send Out Alarms ) 2.0' VR show is the result of a collaborative effort reuniting London based art dealer and curator Janet Rady - JRFA - and Spanish based cross-cultural contemporary art project Nouvelle Vague Artspaces - NVA - that went to incorporate San Francisco art advisory NAVA Contemporary to collaborate on the launch.

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Statement

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‘ In March 2020 I moved back into my Marbella workshop after six months in Morocco, where I had been sourcing and producing the ‘Banners of the Unbanished’ monumental installation for the 1-54 African Art fair that successfully opened in February. A few days in, the world went into a lockdown. I decided to enforce the lockdown rule to the letter and only use media I had inside the workshop, at hand. Cutting off from outside supplies, I reflected on Rem Koolhaas’s idea of ‘Junkspace’ , a concept I had previously juggled with for my first London solo show at Mews 42 Gallery, down in 2013. I here worked around a monochromatic palette reusing recuperated furniture fabric, transforming my post-tribal lost forms into new forms - in order to express sentiment of confinement. The feeling of the outside from the inside. The freedom of inner vitality so present in all Persian poetry that ultimately also turned into the creation of a poetic soundscape ‘ The Strange Death of The Future’. The title of the exhibition is taken from a Chet Baker track I had on as I was working, it threw me back to the 1988 "Let's Get Lost" black and white film by photographer Bruce Weber - that I have always loved - documenting Chet Baker’s last days on earth. It expresses an idea of the internal voyage, where true creative freedom always lies’

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The show also includes works from previous collections.

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MEMORANDUM OF THE UNKNOWN PATH

THEATRE ROYAL DE MARRAKECH 

1-54 ART FAIR 2020 PUBLIC PROGRAM

FEB - MARCH 2020

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WE R THE NOMADS AGENCY

WITH SUPPORT OF FLORA FAMILY FOUNDATION

MAGIC OF PERSIA FOUNDATION

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'BANNERS OF THE UNBANISHED'

INSTALLATION NOMINATED TO

JAMEEL PRIZE 2021

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INCLUDING PROJECTION OF TALKHIMT TADOUNIT

FIROUZ FARMANFARMAIAN FILM I MUSIC BY FORRM

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¨Memorandum of the Unknown Path triggers the necessary question of a return to the source. If ecology of the planet is the restoration of a natural world order, then ecology of the spirit is a restoration of a link to our millenary archaic selves. It stems from an urge to create a Wagnerian ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a total work of art.  To illuminate unseen stories, traces, through a Tolstoyan sense of time, weaving its wheels. Unwinding into unknown paths, tribal entanglement knotting Moroccan and Persian millenary cultures in a sufi-like dance of sacred fabrics and post-tribal symbols sourced in-between the Atlas mountains and the Sahara desert. To use air and space, shadow and light, sound and movement to free an ensemble of imaginary banners under the iconic dome of the Royal Theatre of Marrakech. A site specific  intervention mirroring Berber and Persian Bakhtiari cosmogonies held together by the baraka of raw camel wool, nomad tent elements turned into work of art. A circle of contemplation and meditation, a haven where different cultures can meet and reflect.

 

As in recent explorations into post-tribalism such as in Poetry of the Tribe ( Salomon Arts & Leonard Tourné Gallery - Tribeca, NYC /  Oct-Nov 2018 ) and into the idea of Trace with Permanence of Trace  ( We R the Nomads & Space 50 - Chelsea, London / March - May 2019 ), Memorandum of the Unknown Path works to build on a universal nomadic quality.  Not unlike works of Corean artist Kimsooja or Colombian artist Oscar Murillo it attends to cross cultural thematics such as identity, memory and exile. The exhibition presents itself as a synthesis with a look set upon the uncertain path forward. The balance between archaic spirit and tech-age philosophies. The juncture of cultures crossing and creating new tribes. The unicity of our planet. Contemporary revolutions. "

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Firouz FarmanFarmaian

UD Magazine Profile by Cheryl Gatward

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Installation views courtesy of Adnane Zemmama / 1-54 Art Fair

& Rana Rezapour

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PERMANENCE OF TRACE

WE R THE NOMADS & SPACE@50

LONDON MARCH-MAY 2019

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¨Appropriating and reinventing a ritual grammar drawn in the mythological signs and traditional crafts of the North African Amazigh tribal fabric, FarmanFarmaian’s Talisman panels' create space for an imaginary cartography, a new cosmogony. Fibulas, crosses, rafters... These millenary sacred patterns of femininity, fertility, abundance or protection obstinately imprint themselves as living traces. Traces continuously renewed and endless".

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Sophie Abou Chahine

Writer, Essayist.

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NATURESCAPES

SYRA ARTS I WASHINGTON DC

OCT- NOV 2018

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'The Natural World has been central to my work from the very beginning. I have developed  a meditative / contemplative relationship towards the natural  elements that I have tried to translate here on paper.'

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POETRY OF THE TRIBE

SALOMON ARTS GALLERY NYC

LEONARD TOURNE GALLERY NYC

SEPT-OCT 2018

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MANA CONTEMPORARY

NEW JERSEY CITY I APRIL - SEPT 2019

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Acclaimed writer and essayist Cyrus Bozorgmehr said of the exhibition, “Firouz Farman Farmaian’s meta reflection on the abstraction of tribalism takes us beyond family and landscape to channel the evolving rhythms of identity. Deconstructing memory and archetype, ‘Poetry of the Tribe’ is a vividly elusive series of visions – where monumentality shimmers through an intangible prism and totems tower within a collective consciousness rather than an earthly temple.“Tribalism is a realm of ferocious beauty, of ancestral longing, and ultimately - of love itself. No matter how efficient our superegos become, the visceral drive to weave ourselves into a timeless tapestry of loyalty,custom and symbol beats eternal.”

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ORGANIC ABSTRACTION ( CHAPEL SERIES )

RESIDENCY, EXHIBIT & INSTALL

FABIEN FRYNS FINE ARTS

THE CHAPEL  I SALUCCI HOUSE

MARBELLA 2018-2019

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'The Chapel Series plant the last development of my Abstract Organic phase. A progression debuted in a Finnish retreat circa 2015 with the NatureScapes series, continued in Spain in the winter of 2017-2018 in Fabien Fryns’s Chapel residency program in the rolling hills of the Paraladé domains, in Andalucia. They invoke an intensifying connection to the natural world I call organic abstraction'.


Firouz FarmanFarmaian

Artist Statement.

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NOMADIC DISPLACEMENT ( TRACES )

EXHIBIT & SITE SPECIFIC INSTALLATION

MUSEE DE MARRAKECH

SEPT - NOV 2017

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'Firouz Farman-Farmaian questions the idea of identity in the face of change as well as the intricate substance of memory. Remembrance as a fragile and obstinate posture in front of the forces of time, bringing up questions related to origin, of the trace and of the specificity of the traveled paths.

To contemplate identity and its multiple origins playing with a palette of different perspectives, binding, tying, weaving the rapport of the artist with a Morocco felt like a land of exile and asylum since the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979. A mirroring interplay in between North Africa and Persian heritage, a silk road where we meet the reflection of a Kurdish great grandmother, incarnated mirage in the luminous dust of Berber tribal culture.

An invitation that makes it suddenly possible to meet moving shadows, women in their absent presence… Women that become wool and wool that become women, both motionless, weightless and imposing.'

Sophie Abou Chahine.

Writer, Essayist

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STRATA

GALERIE GOLAN ROUZKHOSH

HAMBURG I FEB-SEPT 2017

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'The spiritual and material worlds are never in opposition to one another in FarmanFarmaian's paintings. This is why I see in his artworks the outburst of a shamanic and iconoclast spirit. With his array of colors, his tremendous freedom and visceral energy Firouz FarmanFarmaian drives his viewer to experiment an astounding return to the beginning of life, of light, of movement'.

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Dr. Jean-Baptiste Chantoiseau
Sorbonne-Nouvelle University
Editor of the Musée Rodin

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SUMMER AT THE CASPIAN

SHIRIN GALLERY NY

NYC I  OCT- DEC 2016

 

MOP FOUNDATION

NIAVARAN CENTER - TEHRAN

JAMM GALLERY - DUBAI

FEB-MARCH 2017

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' In the Summer At The Caspian series, I worked on the forging of personal mythologies. Nostalgia of an unknown, or better said, of what was not to be known. Pre-revolution Iran and its contingencies, here brought  to a personal family-related level, exploring the pre and post emotions of exile and its relation to memory and future.'

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Firouz FarmanFarmaian

Statement

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View Video Statement

ORGANICS

OCEANIC ASPHALTS

SEASONS OF THE LAND

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JANET RADY FINE ARTS, LONDON

ROYA KHADJAVI NYC

GALERIA MAIOR, MALLORCA.

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' I returned to paper studies using pastel, aquarelle, gouache and crayon, researching new linearities inspired by movement and geology. I progressed back onto canvas introducing large Sennelier oil sticks and specially scouted Moroccan pigments. The effort has translated into a growing body of work including recent series such as Organics, Oceanic Asphalts or Seasons of the Land'

DARK SIDE OF THE MASSES INSTALLATION

LOS BARRIOS CULTURAL CENTER

BARBATE CULTURAL CENTER

CADIZ REGION, SPAIN I MAY-AUG 2016

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' The Dark Side of the Masses installation is an emotional + rational post-traumatic reaction to the November 2015 Paris Bataclan attacks. The Installation affirms itself as a full stop in the ongoing movement that characterises my action. The underlying thematics explore the excesses of materialism, and the void left wide open for the rises of sectarian spiritualisms and backward nationalisms.'

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RETROPROJECTIONS

GALERIE GOLAN ROUZKHOSH

PARIS OCT-NOV 2015

MUSEE DE MARRAKECH

MARRAKECH JAN-MARCH 2016

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"Retroprojection as a work on identity, loops back towards my subjective comprehension of historic images from Iran, tracing me back to the lost last years of Qajar rule, and in the process, grasping dying images floating halfway between childhood imagination and archival reality".

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Firouz FarmanFarmaian

Statement

BLUE TAXI TO PARADISE

INSTALLATION, VIDEO INSTALL & EXHIBIT

NANDO ARGUELLES ART PROJECTS

SOTOGRANDE, SPAIN I 2015 

RH MODERN

LOS ANGELES I 2015-2016

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"Blue Taxi To Paradise is what I found to be a chromoclast abstract approach to color blue. I chose to stage it as an installation favoring confrontations between mediums and dimensions, embedding it into my ongoing rapport-action-reaction to the vibrancy of solar light, the force of the natural elements and  my idea of sub-structural layered architectonics."

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Firouz FarmanFarmaian

Statement

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ARCHITECTONICS

RH MODERN

NY, DENVER, SEATTLE I 2015-2017

GALERIA MAIOR

PALMA DE MALLORCA I MAY-JULY 2016

MARJUKKA UUSITALO

HELSINKI I 2015 - 2020

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The influence of my early years as an architecture student in Paris and the tutelage of my grand-father, Iranian architect Abdol-Aziz FarmanFarmaian have translated into my work dually, via a spacial approach and an intricate approach. What I call intricate is a technique I have developed through the years that takes its roots in the act of layering. I see it like a pile of painted interwoven structural studies layered into one, confronting the chaos of the outside world ( the natural world ).

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WAVES

GALERIE GOLAN ROUZKHOSH

PARIS I MAY-JUNE 2014

BARCLAYS BANK

PARIS I JULY-OCT 2014

ANTONIO BANDERAS FOUNDATION

SPAIN I 2019

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"Firouz Farman-Farmaian presents momentary meditations on the visible energy and motion of the natural world. Each painting is an instinctive moment of emotional and intellectual energy. Flowing through the synapses and the fractals of consciousness, they unfold into a dialogue with nature and on into lyrical reflection. These are not descriptions. They are not representations. They are snapshots from elusive experience; raw and fleeting, of something ending, something beginning."

 

Zahra Faridany-Akhavan PhD.

Harvard University

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JUNKSPACE

MEWS 42 GALLERY

LONDON I MAY-JUNE 2013

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'If space junk is the human débris that litters the universe, Junkspace is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The built product of modernization is Junkspace. Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or more precisely, what coagulates when modernization is in progress, its fallout '

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Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace.

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