CATALOGUE
Opening Thursday, July 27, 2023, opening reception 5-9pm.
ADVOCARTSY is pleased to announce its Summer 2023 Group exhibition, Resilience, featuring works by Pouya Afshar, Farshid Bazmandegan, Kourosh Beighpour, Ali Dadgar, Marjan Hormozi, Mobina Nouri, Hadi Salehi, Delbar Shahbaz and Foroozan Shirghani. The exhibition will open with a reception July 27th from 5-9pm and will be on view through August 26th, 2023, at our West Hollywood gallery located at 434 N La Cienega Blvd. (Just South of Melrose), Los Angeles. The exhibition opening will be in conjunction with Gallery Association Los Angeles’s 3rd annual Gallery Weekend Los Angeles.
ADVOCARTSY’s Summer group exhibition 2023, explores the profound theme of resilience as depicted through the diverse artistic expressions of contemporary artists of Iranian origin, including Pouya Afshar, Farshid Bazmandegan, Kourosh Beighpour, Ali Dadgar, Marjan Hormozi, Mobina Nouri, Hadi Salehi, Delbar Shahbaz and Foroozan Shirghani. The works exhibited delve into the intricate facets of the human condition, focusing on various aspects of grappling with, navigating, and triumphing over arduous life, political and human experiences. Each artwork thoughtfully encapsulates the resilience intrinsic to our existence, serving as a visual testament to the indomitable spirit of the human journey as individuals confront and conquer adversity. The exhibition showcases works in varied mediums including paintings, drawings, sculptures and analog photography and addresses the myriad of ways individuals confront and conquer adversity.
The exhibition opening will be held on Thursday July 27, 2023 from 5-9pm, in conjunction with Gallery Association Los Angeles’s 3rd annual Gallery Weekend Los Angeles.
For press or inquiries email us at info@advocartsy.com.
Exhibiting Artist Biographies
Pouya Afshar is an alumnus from the California Institute of Arts Character Animation department and is a graduate of University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television focusing in Animation and Digital Media. He has exhibited his work as a visual artist throughout the United States and Middle East, including Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, Bovard Auditorium at University of Southern California, Royce Hall at University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art studios, 18th street Art Center, Craft Contemporary Museum, and numerous galleries and art fairs around the world. Afshar has presented his research at Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Southern California, The School of Museum of Fine Arts Boston, University of California Los Angeles, and Residency Unlimited NY. He is the creator, character designer, and producer of the animated series ‘Rostam in Wonderland’ and the co-creator of ‘1PA2PA’ comics and the creator of ‘TEHRAN’ graphic novel. He is currently an associate professor of art at University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
Farshid Bazmandegan
Farshid Bazmandegan is an Iranian American artist working between installation and object making. His work explores themes of displacement, identity, and geopolitics. He is currently a MFA candidate in the UCLA Department of Art. Bazmandegan’s ongoing practice explores how Western policies and interests have affected many lives in the Middle East. “What would my life look like, If my democratic government had not been overthrown” is an exploration in regards to the 1953 coup in Iran co-organized by the United States CIA. The far reaching effects of this coup would in the end lead to his own displacement and separation from his home.
Kourosh Beigpour is an LA-based award-winning graphic artist and type designer. He received his BFA in 2003 from the Tehran University of Art, which is one of Asia’s oldest and most prestigious art schools and received an MFA in International Contemporary Art and Design from the Limkokwing University. Beigpour’s use of typography and graphic design have been published in more than 30 countries around the globe. Beigpour has an impressive portfolio that showcases his remarkable creative energy and signature designs. He is especially interested in Persian and Arabic typography and identity design where he uses illustration backgrounds to create those eye-catching works of art that stand out and ultimately show his love and appreciation for millennia old Iranian art and culture. He has designed graphic works for a different range of the client such as Google, The Broad Museum, The Getty, UCI, UCLA, Northeastern Illinois University, Oklahoma State University, Canada Type, Powerhouse Museum, DoppelHouse Press, Hands Media Publication and The Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies.
Iranian born Ali Dadgar is a multi-disciplinary experimental artist working across image, text, object based media and performance. His latest solo exhibition “Additions/Redaction“, opened in January 2020 at Desai Matta Gallery in San Francisco. Dadgar holds an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts. For the present time, he is enjoying a fruitful and inspired practice in isolation and poverty.
Marjan Hormozi
Marjan Hormozi was born to an Iranian family in Tehran. Her father and uncle were in the advertising industry and in her early life she grew up in a very busy household that was like an around-the-clock ad agency. This very free and creative environment gave Marjan her initial love and passion for making art and storytelling. Marjan is a figurative artist who works with satirical themes within a historical precedent, filtering them through contemporary actors and staging them in theater-like settings. The social concerns addressed in her work are not portrayed as dogmatic, pedagogical, nor do they offer tidy solutions. For Marjan, the creative driving force is the narrative that presents itself to be reinterpreted. Her work could be considered a modern take on a Shakespearean tragedy; the compositions are lyrical and robust with complex characters in elaborate costumes interacting in an unconventional environment. Marjan received her MFA from Slade School of Fine Arts, London. Her solo and group shows include, PØST, Track 16 gallery, Los Angeles, Crucial Gallery, London, the Royal Academy of Art, London, Torrance Museum of Art and LACE, Los Angeles. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the Cheltenham fellowship (UK), Artist in Residence at the Stroud Museum (UK) and Artist in Residence at the University of North London (UK). Her work has appeared in various print and broadcast media including L.A. Weekly, KCRW, Ritz magazine UK, Studio International UK, BBC UK and is included in international private collections. Professor Marjan Hormozi is the Area Head for Drawing Studio at Otis College of Art And Design and teaches Drawing and Painting at CalArts.
Born in Isfahan, Iran and currently residing in Los Angeles, Mobina Nouri is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice reflects her personal history as a female immigrant who left Iran to live in the UK and later the US. Working across a variety of media, the artist mines her country’s tradition of storytelling, often turning to Persian literature, philosophies, and mysticism to contemplate and reconsider the complexities she bears witness to in the contemporary world. Nouri received her BA in Performing Arts, from Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University, and MA in Product Design from Tehran University of Art, Iran, and her Ph.D. in Creativity Science from City, University of London, UK. Nouri has exhibited her work internationally. Many of her artworks have been acquired by prominent private collections across the globe. Recently, a piece from her Poetography series was exhibited in San Francisco’s de Young Museum, as well as featured in local and international publications. Nouri received the 2020 MOZAIK Future Art Award, the 2020 Juror’s Choice in the “Art Saves Humanity” Competition curated by a panel of renowned art world advocates & entrepreneurs, including Jerry Saltz, as well as the 2019 Juror’s choice award at the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery. She was a selected juror for MOZAIK Future Art’s “Re-Imagining Democracy” exhibition in 2021 and was selected to be an artist in residence at Djerassi for their 2022 program in the Bay area. Nouri is currently teaching Creativity Methods at University of California, Berkeley, in the Arts and Design Department.
Hadi Salehi is a master of the art of analog photography. Salehi’s images capture diverse portraits that are powerful and soft, leaving a haunting quality that lingers in the psyche. Salehi seeks to create a collective awareness as a cultural messenger through his images, revealing quiet truths through his process intensive works. With a career that spans more than 40 years, Salehi has closely documented cultural innovators such as Keith Haring, as well as developed an expansive body of analog, digital, film, and mixed media works. Hadi Salehi is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena and currently resides in Los Angeles.
Multi-disciplinary artist Delbar Shahbaz works across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and video. Of central concern to her practice is the negotiation of gender identity, transformation, and emancipation as well as human connection to the natural realm. Delbar Shahbaz engages with self-identity as fluid, socially constructed, and multifaceted. She responds to her own experiences as a female migrant yet connects her subjectivity to the universal subject matter. Shahbaz received her MFA from Art University in Tehran, Iran in 2008. She went on to pursue a career as a professional artist and educator before migrating to the USA in 2013. Shahbaz received her second MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, CA; she has been working as a part-time faculty member there since 2016. Shahbaz has exhibited as a solo artist and in group shows extensively internationally.
Foroozan Shirghani, born in Iran (1981) is a multidisciplinary artist who received her BFA from Tehran Azad Art University in 2004 and her MFA from Alzahra University in 2008. She served as a lecturer and art instructor at the Share Rey Azad university and Shariati University in Tehran between 2008 to 2015. Her work has been featured in over sixty exhibitions worldwide and featured in numerous publications. She has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2015.
Shirghani’s work stems from her personal experiences and focuses on psychological and socio-political issues, especially identity boundaries. Her art explores universal themes of displacement, alienation, and loss and pressure exerted on the human body by these forces. She addresses these life-altering situations by fragmenting, deforming, and often destruction of her subjects and mediums. In her work, objects have a symbolic nature expressing social behaviors.
Shirghani works across mediums, including painting, drawing, ceramic sculptures, abstract video, and textiles.
