Lives Tehran
Magic White Horse with Gold Saddle
2008
Oil and acrylic on canvas
180x180cm
Courtesy the artist, The Third Line and the MAC Collection, Dubai
Farhad Moshiri has been using art as a means of considering life in his native Iran since he began exhibiting in 2002. His work has been rich and diverse, encompassing installations and sculptures including gilded weapons and extravagant furniture. But, above all, he is a painter, consciously blending elements of East and West. S54Y (2005) is a semi-abstract composition of enlarged Persian calligraphy, which draws on Abdjad, an Arabic language of numbers and signs. He has also created a series of paintings based on images of antique ceramic vases, similarly embellished with calligraphy (‘The Past is Past’, 2005). More recently Moshiri has brought rich texture and layering to the surfaces of his pictures: in Mobile Talker (2007) a wedding cake lurks below another image, picked out in glitter, of a woman in a headscarf using a mobile phone. (MF)
