October Gallery presents No rain will put out this fire, a new solo exhibition by renowned Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi, whose paintings are made from bold gestural brushstrokes which are layered with meaning.
Golnaz Fathi is an influential member of a stimulating group of contemporary artists to surface in Iran over the last two decades. Fathi, whose work is, amongst others, in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The British Museum, is one of only a tiny handful of women trained to the highest level within the discipline of traditional calligraphy. Fascinated by the expressive potential of traditional Persian calligraphic forms, Fathi made the conscious decision to fulfil her career as an artist rather than to continue within the world of Middle Eastern calligraphy, that is practised predominantly by male calligraphers. In previous works, Fathi explored calligraphy’s boundaries by applying a technique based on siah-mashq, an exercise where a calligrapher writes repeatedly until the paper is concealed by black ink. The artist often works on her canvases so that sections appear to be densely black, which when examined, are revealed to be fine, intertwined lines.
Fathi frequently combines stark blacks and whites with primary colours. Reds, yellows and blues are all deliberately selected to reference a particular mood and Fathi’s complex relationship with her homeland: in her recent works, red becomes a symbol of life, while bright yellow and blue are notions of hope. Colours and strokes are the responses of urgent feelings that she needs to depict. Emotion permeates from the calm, monochromatic canvases with the lines speaking for themselves.
As Fathi comments, ‘The writings within the works are completely illegible. Usually, I destroy whatever is readable to make it unreadable. It is only the act of writing; its pure improvisation.’
Her paintings push the boundaries of legibility and intelligibility, the liminal and subliminal. As we attempt to ‘read’ her works, the canvases speak directly to the unconscious mind of each individual viewer, evoking responses that exist in all of us – whether or not we are conscious of their presence.
Press release courtesy October Gallery.
24 Old Gloucester Street
Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 3AL
United Kingdom
www.octobergallery.co.uk
+44 (0)20 7242 7367
Tuesday – Saturday
12:30pm – 17:30pm
Closed 23 December 2023 – 8 January 2024