Galerie

Georg Nothelfer

Elmira Iravanizad

Biography

born 1987 in Tehran
2011 BA Painting, Tehran University
2012 MA Fine Art, London Metropolitan University
2014 DAAD Scholarship, University of the Arts Berlin
2018 NAIRS Residency, Center for Contemporary Art, Engadin, Switzerland
2018 Villa Lena Artist Residency, Tuscany, Italy
2019 Krems Art Residency (AIR), Scholarship of the Federal State of Lower Austria, Austria
Lives and works in Berlin.

Elmira Iravanizad's work encompasses a variety of themes, materials and artistic genres. The artist paints in oil, creates sculptures from ceramics, metal and wood and assembles collages from drawings, cut-outs, paste-overs and overpaintings. She archives, arranges and reuses the remnants of her artistic work. Her forms, which move from artwork to artwork and from one genre to another, are reminiscent of signs, vessels, objects and architecture; they appear organic or functional and mechanical. Yet they always remain abstract and represent only themselves. They are, however, reminiscent of the artist's cultural background in Iran, of the urban landscapes of Tehran, London and Berlin, of connections and seemingly insurmountable ruptures between the present and history as well as between different cultures, and of the brutality of ideology. Iravanizad's artistic approach and the result are characterised by great openness. Sometimes an image or a memory stands at the beginning of a new work, sometimes an interesting material or the will to go a new way. The artworks are also open and accessible: they play with the magic of the unfinished and contrast perfectly finished with still raw areas, which arouses curiosity and encourages the viewer to reflect. What can classical materials such as oil paint, wood, clay and iron still tell us in the digital age? Iravanizad succeeds in posing old questions about art in a new way and critically positioning her work in the context of global, post-colonial contemporary art. (Text by Hannah Jacobi)

Exhibitions

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