Sepand Danesh is a French-Iranian artist born in Tehran in 1984. He left Iran for good at the age of 12. Years of war and repression in Iran, followed by immigration and exile, push him to the edges of society. From there, he grows interested in the evolution and transformation of humans from one society to the other, from one moment or space to the next. In his paintings, all characters are placed in a corner without ceiling or floor, on shelves slightly and composed of one identical fragment – a cube or a ‘voxel’ (a pixel in volume). In the corner, the physical body is at a full stop and can’t evolve further. Therefore, it is ought to shift into the imagination and fantasy of the mind, defined by the artist as a mental body. This desire for an escape from a body, a language or a relationship has led to the transformation of forms.
In the new works, he constructs a pictorial fiction in which the artist becomes a character and painting becomes a space of mise en abyme*. The central canvas depicts a painter, in the act of painting a cactus. As often in his works, the figure is pushed into a corner, placed on a shelf. The scene unfolds within an interior structured by a multicolored checkerboard with uncertain perspectives. A window opens onto an ambiguous landscape. Is it a sunrise, or sunset or a world in flames? This visual uncertainty introduces a quiet tension between beauty and catastrophe, renewal and ending. Around this foundational scene, the exhibition unfolds through a series of plant paintings, as if they were the works produced by this fictional painter.
Plant paintings evoke a world rebuilt from fragments, as if nature itself were passing through a filter, reduced and reassembled. A bonsai with fragmented branches and flower rising alone in an ornamental vase strike a balance between fragility and rigid beauty. A cactus, capable of surviving in the harshest environments, becomes a metaphor for a discreet yet powerful symbol of resilience and human persistence in the face of a world. Painting by the artist may sometimes become an indirect act, almost fragile. Nevertheless to continue producing images is to maintain an unstable balance, between reality and fiction, between contemplation and urgency, like his figures on the corner.
* Mise en abyme is a French term meaning ‘to place in the abyss’, and it is a ‘structure within
a structure’ technique that creates a sense of infinite repetition by placing a smaller work with
the same structure as the main artwork inside it.
