Kevin Jones visits Shahpour Pouyan in Tehran and speaks to the artist about his practice to 'understand the cultural references behind his sculptures and works on paper that comment on power.'
"Power, for a start. Power and patriarchy. Power and ideology. Power and peril. Pouyan explores expressions of power, as any gallery press release will tell you, but his use of beauty—ornament, detail, seduction—as a strategy in this interrogation is his undeniable hallmark. Obsession. As in the ceaseless return to certain images—of warfare and weaponry, Persian miniatures, vanished architecture—much like the mourning reflex of obsessing on the image of the deceased. Finally, contradiction."
The interview is featured in the 100th issue of Art Asia Pacific.
