Farhad Ahrarnia b. 1971
Rhapsody in Blue, with shades of ArborVitae and Emerald Greens, 2018
Hand woven with a variety of warp and weft threads in wool and cotton, all dyed using handmade extracts drawn from nature
154 x 64 cm
60 5/8 x 25 1/4 in
60 5/8 x 25 1/4 in
Copyright The Artist
Rhapsody in Blue is a haptic sculptural take and a meditation on the physicality and materiality of Iranian Farsh and its lyricism and visuality. As a hand woven entity its...
Rhapsody in Blue is a haptic sculptural take and a meditation on the physicality and materiality of Iranian Farsh and its lyricism and visuality. As a hand woven entity its formation relies on a set of digital and binary sensibilities, rendering it highly mathematical and logical in its formation by means way of applying hundreds upon hundreds of knots to build up a mass.
Yet conventionally Farsh tends to be read as a flat surface, decorative yet at the same time functional.
In this series I am offering a three dimensional representation of Farsh which twists and opens up a space and dialogue for reading it back to front, and in much of its entire 360 degrees. Compromising its practical everyday functionality and relegating it to the realm of the painterly where the composition is read vertically.
By removing one of the four woven borders around the depicted central motif, a sense of adaptability and openness is suggested. In this series the realistic representational motifs at the centre of each composition are borrowed from 18th and 19th century botanical illustrations of plants, flowers and vegetables. The realism of these depictions are far from the traditional geometric, and flat representations of animals, humans, flora and fauna.
The overall physicality of each piece, their titles and the depicted central motifs remind us of Farsh's dependence on natural resources and of being strongly rooted and connected to earth . Where nature is mined, tamed and re-articulated into a set of sophisticated cultural traits, skills, patterns, motifs, histories and an expanding and for ever evolving aesthetics which add to the heritage.
Yet conventionally Farsh tends to be read as a flat surface, decorative yet at the same time functional.
In this series I am offering a three dimensional representation of Farsh which twists and opens up a space and dialogue for reading it back to front, and in much of its entire 360 degrees. Compromising its practical everyday functionality and relegating it to the realm of the painterly where the composition is read vertically.
By removing one of the four woven borders around the depicted central motif, a sense of adaptability and openness is suggested. In this series the realistic representational motifs at the centre of each composition are borrowed from 18th and 19th century botanical illustrations of plants, flowers and vegetables. The realism of these depictions are far from the traditional geometric, and flat representations of animals, humans, flora and fauna.
The overall physicality of each piece, their titles and the depicted central motifs remind us of Farsh's dependence on natural resources and of being strongly rooted and connected to earth . Where nature is mined, tamed and re-articulated into a set of sophisticated cultural traits, skills, patterns, motifs, histories and an expanding and for ever evolving aesthetics which add to the heritage.