Press Release
O Gallery is pleased to announce the second edition of 3 on 3, a valuable platform for emerging artists. Consisting of 2 exhibitions, each of these 2-week shows during the summer, showcase the work of 3 artists. Each selected artist will present a solo body of work at one of the gallery’s three floors. The criteria for selection were talent, originality, promise and the ability to benefit from a smaller space allocated to their work. The chosen artists for the 2017 edition all present works on paper. Presenting the works of young and emerging artists has been O Gallery’s desire from the beginning and with the selection of works on paper (something that has been of great focus at O), we hope to achieve a larger audience and benefit a larger crowd of artists through our 3 on 3 program. On the top floor, O Gallery presents “Dyspepsia,” a collection of works on paper by Pegah Rajamand (b. 1988 Orumiyeh). It seems that unlike other monsters made by the human mind, these technological, scientific, capitalistic monsters are not made to go, to be digested, to let the cycle of life and Earth’s renewal remain. No, this time they have come to remain, or at least not to be digested easily in the digestive system of the universe; or in scientific terms, they have been made not to decompose or not to return to nature effortlessly. Because they are Ahriman’s children, Devil’s offspring, in the sense that they are disruptions, and make chaos, in nature’s order as a truth that puts everything in its true position (thus justice) called “Asha” in Avesta. In this ancient Iranian lexicon, its opposite is “druj” which means tyranny, darkness, lie. Since when Man assumed he can live in “druj” and not to put things in their true positions? Man has come to sustain just like his creatures. Its population growth on earth shows that. But is there enough space on Earth for both Man and those indigestible products of his ignorance, greed, and denying nature’s order? Will Man be able to find a remedy for their indigestibility with the same rational mentality that he made them? Or another kind of mentality must enter the field? A way of thinking that is in peace with the Truth, the Earth, and the Nature? In peace with “Asha”? – Pegah Rajamand In the middle floor, a new collection of works on paper by Azarakhsh Asgari (b. 1982 Tehran) will be on display. My work is rather “symbolic.” That is to say that one can take a certain thing and interpret it into something else. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But if this is the case, it’s something that has happened unconsciously in most instances. To clarify, I don’t add to my work to portray a message, it is what it is. Moreover, there is a “narrative”, or at least there is one for me. If someone were to ask me what that narrative was, I probably wouldn’t be able to give a clear response but there are things in the back of my mind that I know they’re there. The works on display are from my works on paper collection which I began working on in 2009 alongside my canvas paintings; independent and somewhat dependent on them. – Azarakhsh Asgari Last but not least, in the basement, “Plains of Agony,” a collection of works on paper by Maryam Razavi (b. 1985 Rasht) is presented. Stuck in the limbo, I feel like being there. Where I am neither supposed to start nor to end; timeless and devouring plains. My plains are fixed in a frame, insurmountable. Plains which are always there; plains of agony. – Maryam Razavi
Selected Works
