Join us for a No. 9 Cork Street Private View of Dastan Gallery exhibition Soft Edge of the Blade and launch of a new Frieze 91 Speaker Series with Roxane Zand, Independent curator and Art advisor, former Sotheby’s Middle East Deputy Chairman, Hormoz Hematian, Founding Director of Dastan’s Gallery and artist Reza Aramesh.
Drinks and canapés will be served, with Iranian Imperial Beluga Caviar generously provided by Black Gold Caviar.
Dastan presents the first in a new series of exhibitions, called Soft Edge of the Blade, at No.9 Cork Street in February 2022. This will be a 'Dastan Outside' event, gathering a long list of contemporary Iranian artists.
The focus of this project is on how Iranian artists today deal, in their work, with different aspects of violence in its various 'soft', symbolic, hidden or underlying guises, common to the "Middle East". The outlook is not limited to the more obviously visible 'state' violence of war or political oppression. The intended scope is broader and more subtle, extending to numerous more insidious forms of ‘soft’ violence affecting Iranians today: migration and diaspora, identity and gender, patriarchy and family, the impact of the complexities of history on the day-to-day life of Iranians at home and/or abroad, the use of language - e.g. on social media - to disparage or oppress.
'Soft Edge of the Blade' allows UK audiences to continue exploring Iran’s contemporary scene, with a focus on powerful themes of relevance and interest to global audiences.
Harvard and Oxford educated, Roxane Zand has had a longstanding career in museum and arts administration, as well as in the commercial art world. She worked as freelance consultant for numerous projects for the British Museum and elsewhere in the art sector before joining Sothebys in 2006 where she played an instrumental role in developing and contributing to sales of Arab and Iranian art. She left as Senior Director and Deputy Chairman for the Middle East in 2020 to launch ZandFineArts, a new chapter as independent art advisor and curator. Currently she sits on the Advisory Council of the Pictet Art Prize, and has been appointed as Her Majesty’s Representative Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London in recognition for her services to Middle Eastern art and culture.
Hormoz Hematian (b. 1984, Tehran, Iran) is the founding director of Dastan, and the founder of Teer Art, Iran’s first art fair. Hormoz was trained as a civil engineer, studying transportation at the University of Maryland and construction management at the University of British Columbia. After a few years of working as an analyst in Canada, he returned to his hometown of Tehran in 2011 to start his own engineering consultancy practice where he secretly hoped to host small displays by artists of his generation outside his working hours, which turned into Dastan’s Basement in 2012. The larger Dastan Gallery now is a multi gallery operation including Dastan’s Basement, +2 Gallery, and Parallel Circuit and regularly hosts exhibitions outside and inside Iran.
Reza Aramesh’s work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions most recently at 14th Edition of Havana Biennial 2022, 9th Edition of Sculpture in the City 2021, London, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge 2020, Asia Society Museum in New York (2021), Met Breuer in New York (2018), SCAD Museum in Georgia Atlanta (2018), Akademie der Kunst Berlin (2016), the 2015 Venice Biennale, Art Basel Parcours 2017, Frieze Sculpture Park 2015 and 2017, and at Maxxi Museum in Rome (2016). He has orchestrated a number of performances and exhibitions in such spaces as at Barbican Art Centre,Tate Britain and ICA, London. His works have entered public and private collections worldwide including in Argentina, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, USA, Belgium, France, Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia and the UK. Reza Aramesh was born in Iran and has been living in London since he was 18 years of age. He holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths University, London (1997).
Working in photography, sculpture, video and performance, Aramesh’s profound understanding of the history of art, film and literature is ever-present in his artwork. As a response to war reportage images from sources such as newspapers, online articles and social media, Aramesh de-contextualises scenes of reportage images of violence from their origins, exploring the narratives of representation and iconography of subjected body in the context of race, class and sexuality in order to create a critical conversation with the western art history.