Artist Review: ELHAM ETEMADI
-ART HISTORY IN MOTION-
ART HISTORY IN MOTION #3
– ELHAM ETEMADI –
Prose & Poetry by Fabien BEUCHET, Pictures courtesy of Elham ETEMADI
Portrait of the Artist Elham Etemadi
I don’t want to be related to a school,
even if I am close to the surrealist movement as my work leaves a large part to
my imagination and dreams. These are really important things to me.
My works are characterized by an oneiric chromaticity.
There are a lot of forms which are linked together by motifs destined to
give to the whole a certain unity.
This technique gives birth to mysterious artworks.
The way I begin to paint is nearly totally random, this is the reason why my paintings
are close to the surrealist view.
I compose with wide lyrical taches destined to be interpreted figuratively.
I go into a space which seems to be limitless.
– Elham ETEMADI –
Born in 1983 in Shiraz, Iran, Elham Etemadi was already an accomplished artist before coming to France in 2010.
Having earned a Titular Mention from the Association of Drawers of Iran
– an eminently artistic country and civilization for many thousand years –
she then became valedictorian in 2007 before her Master Degree (+6) in Painting at the University of Art of Tehran.
Ambitious, Elham Etemadi arrived in France only a year after having earned her first Master Degree in Iran, to earn, in 2012, her second Master Degree, in Visual Arts at the University of Strasbourg, France.
But, Talented, she has not just earned two Master Degrees in two different countries, two different civilizations, as she is Doctor in Arts since 2018, having had a huge success at the University of Strasbourg, France, with her thesis L’Irruption du jeu dans l’art visuel contemporain (The Irruption of the Play in Contemporary Visual Art).
The play, the game, only one word in French: le jeu, a word characterizing Elham Etemadi’s Art since the first time I met it.
Grand Crab, acrylic on canvas, 69.7 x 81.9 x 2 in, / 177 x 208 x 5 cm, 2019
Animals, toys, architectural elements stand alongside humans on the stage of the canvas.
They run it, will reappear as if the space provided them an infinite freedom.
I had the honor to meet both the Artist and her creations made of freedom just a few days after she arrived in France, in 2009. She came with drawings and paintings from which emanated a very accomplished serene strength, a solemn fuel, a personal way to unite colors via their differences, a unique way to reveal both the full & the void via her never-ending paths in perpetual evolution.
Painting, drawing, with thin lines, flat tints, and even writings turning into discreet meaningful elements; all melting, creating, fusing with animals and silhouettes which are all familiar and mysterious at the same time…
The declaration of the immutable perpetual motion, this is the basis of the alchemy Elham Etemadi offers us.
See with Heart, acrylic on canvas, 21.7 x 18.1 x 1 in / 55.2 x 46 x 2.5 cm, 2019
So impregnating are the artefacts of the affect That within the present they inject Sometimes the diktat of the time’s fracture, Sometimes the predicate of the beautiful facture Of the eternal Instant. Who turns the ditches into knolls Engraves the dimples of the wise, of the child, As on the obverse as the reverse of these skies Which at all ages at all Times Enthuse so much… So that we let go… Aesthete-smiles. Present of passages Landscape of presences, Each of our stories Suffers from this asthma, attic of the be-ing, Which makes up the existence as a sustenance… And this is when, all of a sudden, lantern Postern lighthouse the artist offers us A mirror, threshold from the pond to the being. Collection of mirrors, of thresholds Of peaks, Elham Etemadi expounds, Proposes the present … As daily as exceptional, As personal As universal that it is. Expanding miniatures and Expressive embroideries Of an ever evolving meridian, Elham Etemadi signifies the present As it signs us, engraves us : From the mists of time … to the Instant’s skies. Elham Etemadi the truth Of existence, of life, exemplifies According to the principle of reciprocity Leading us to pass daily from noise To sonority ; From scream to vocalise, From the fruit still hanging To its dispersion full of fertility. Playing … is living the key-instant, Is at each instant inviting … Us to let go Us to weave detached links More than ever having a firm grip on reality, For it is the aesthetics that is shared by all humanity. Letting go is in essence Giving all the room to the presence … So the fact that you find To place yourselves, to sign yourselves Within so many perspectives Colours and lines Shall signify that you too Setār and cello Will have known to make agree. Future of Legacies & Legacy of the Future, Occidentiran, Iranoccident. Springing from a being in our time, The keys of a spontaneous ground whose colours Perspectives and lines are reinventing themselves ; Spacings inviting us to also Reinvent ourselves As the march of our present goes by. Fertile loams residing as within the yesteryear as within the here, So it is when The starlings are brushing the sky That we Feel, betyls, the Present. 67 verse poem accompanying in situ the Artists’ artworks during the exhibition Jeux de Chimères (Plays of Chimeras), 9th January– 3rd February 2017 Gallery of Arts, Palace of Europe, Strasbourg, France -- (Original French version available on the author’s website : fabien-beuchet.com) |
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For Art History
was always born in Present times
for the sake of the Future
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