BIO:
I was born in 1968 in Teheran, Iran. I live and work since 2013 in Vienna, Austria and in Lodève, France.
I spent my childhood in Iran, Algeria, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Norway and occasionally France. I started painting at eleven, in Norway because winters are so long there.
In 1989 I entered the art academy of «Beaux-Arts in Aix en Provence, France where I discovered the paint work of «Support Surface»in the atelier of André Valensi and scenography with Jacques Hémery.
Strongly influenced by abstract expressionism of american painters I decided to move to Canada in 1991, in order to study in french at a north american university.
In 1994 I graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the «University of Quebec In Montreal» (UQAM), Canada. I spent long hours during canadian winter in the printing department, focusing on etching, lithography, and silkscreen.
In 1997 I graduated with a Masters of Art History from UQAM with an installation project called «Everyday’s Suitcases» an artistic sociological proposition on the theme of transnational objects in collaboration with canadian immigrants.
I was granted from the «Art Council of Canada» in 2000, for an installation project called «Sic Transit» on the theme of transitory comfort spaces.
Meanwhile I have also been working as free-lance graphic designer, illustrator, and magazine art director in Canada and Interior designer in France.
I moved back in France in 2001, after ten years in Canada and settled my studio practice in the Montpellier area in 2005, where I have been painting and teaching visual arts to adults and teenagers in the studio and in schools.
Since 2011 I live in Vienna, Austria where I do mainly illustration and painting and where the winter is long enough to be creative…
Today in my work I employ hybrid multiple planes of reality, which applied to painting could mean going back and forward from abstraction to figuration, using multiple layers of figurative subjects and different painting techniques in the same picture. The purpose is to create a climate of dream like state that connects different aspects of reality. Overall, I try to heighten my senses to a point of limit state (“état limite”) in order to transcribe different levels of reality, revealing a space in between, where the “marvelous real” appears. Marvelous: not meaning beautiful and pleasant, but extraordinary, accurate, dense and clear. Surrealists, magical realism, symbolists, romantics, occultists, street artists, comics, are among my inspiration of the moment.
I like to collaborate with others on projects involving different disciplines. I find a balance between periods in the studio focusing on painting and drawing and periods of collective projects. My collaborations have been going from group art projects in galleries, to illustrating books, to painting performances with musicians and actors, to a nomadic social and interdisciplinary project with a caravan.
I was born in 1968 in Teheran, Iran. I live and work since 2013 in Vienna, Austria and in Lodève, France.
I spent my childhood in Iran, Algeria, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Norway and occasionally France. I started painting at eleven, in Norway because winters are so long there.
In 1989 I entered the art academy of «Beaux-Arts in Aix en Provence, France where I discovered the paint work of «Support Surface»in the atelier of André Valensi and scenography with Jacques Hémery.
Strongly influenced by abstract expressionism of american painters I decided to move to Canada in 1991, in order to study in french at a north american university.
In 1994 I graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the «University of Quebec In Montreal» (UQAM), Canada. I spent long hours during canadian winter in the printing department, focusing on etching, lithography, and silkscreen.
In 1997 I graduated with a Masters of Art History from UQAM with an installation project called «Everyday’s Suitcases» an artistic sociological proposition on the theme of transnational objects in collaboration with canadian immigrants.
I was granted from the «Art Council of Canada» in 2000, for an installation project called «Sic Transit» on the theme of transitory comfort spaces.
Meanwhile I have also been working as free-lance graphic designer, illustrator, and magazine art director in Canada and Interior designer in France.
I moved back in France in 2001, after ten years in Canada and settled my studio practice in the Montpellier area in 2005, where I have been painting and teaching visual arts to adults and teenagers in the studio and in schools.
Since 2011 I live in Vienna, Austria where I do mainly illustration and painting and where the winter is long enough to be creative…
Today in my work I employ hybrid multiple planes of reality, which applied to painting could mean going back and forward from abstraction to figuration, using multiple layers of figurative subjects and different painting techniques in the same picture. The purpose is to create a climate of dream like state that connects different aspects of reality. Overall, I try to heighten my senses to a point of limit state (“état limite”) in order to transcribe different levels of reality, revealing a space in between, where the “marvelous real” appears. Marvelous: not meaning beautiful and pleasant, but extraordinary, accurate, dense and clear. Surrealists, magical realism, symbolists, romantics, occultists, street artists, comics, are among my inspiration of the moment.
I like to collaborate with others on projects involving different disciplines. I find a balance between periods in the studio focusing on painting and drawing and periods of collective projects. My collaborations have been going from group art projects in galleries, to illustrating books, to painting performances with musicians and actors, to a nomadic social and interdisciplinary project with a caravan.