NEW YORK, NY.- CUE Art Foundation presents In the Shadows, the first New York solo exhibition of work by artist Fereidoun Ghaffari, mentored by Brooklyn Rail Co-Founder and Artistic Director Phong Bui. The exhibition consists of an ongoing series of intimate self-portraits rendered in oil paint, a practice initiated by the artist in 2006 in his home studio.
In the Shadows will be on view at CUE’s gallery space, located at 137 West 25th Street, until July 9th, 2022. Attendance during gallery hours (Tuesday–Saturday, 12-6 pm) is free, and no reservations are required.
In the Shadows is a solo exhibition by Fereidoun Ghaffari with curatorial mentorship from Phong Bui. The exhibition presents a series of self-portraits by the artist rendered in thickly layered and textured oil paint, from close ups of his face to full body paintings at scale. The works on view as part of the show represent only a small portion of Ghaffari’s ongoing series of self-portraits, which he began in 2006. In these paintings, stripped bare of any markers that might suggest a particular culture or time, Ghaffari – who was raised in Iran and is currently based in Brooklyn – resists the politicization of his art. For the artist, painting is “a process of digging into the inner self,” and a quest for intimacy and meaning that is universally human.
Through his repetitive and continuous process, Ghaffari uses painting to consider the basic elements of humanity. Years in the making, In the Shadows at CUE Art Foundation is the debut exhibition of Ghaffari’s self-portraiture series and marks the artist's first solo exhibition in New York – and the first time he invites a public audience to witness the outcomes of his private and solitary practice.
Having followed Ghaffari’s work in the past four years, mentor Phong Bui locates it within a Western art historical understanding of self-portraiture, from Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man to Rembrandt’s lifetime practice of using himself as a subject; from Picasso’s cubist and surrealist representations of self to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. Like these earlier works, Ghaffari’s self-portraits convey an evolution of the self over time, and are “predicated upon a necessity to engage in a mediation upon life’s experiences in totality, or to confront the deeper aspects of [oneself] from within.
Unlike these historical examples, however, few of Ghaffari’s self-portraits presented as part of In the Shadows are considered by the artist to be finished. Observes catalogue essayist Sinclair Spratley: “Ghaffari’s paintings reveal that the project of self-making is ever developing and changing; what seems like a stable self-image one day can look like a distorted, incorrect projection the next. In this way, Ghaffari refuses to be lockstep with other painting practices that permit easy access to the work’s content or internal logic, rather challenging the viewer to sit uncomfortably with confrontation. An encounter with such rawness and vulnerability brings the self-making project of the work into fuller view; while one may not ‘see’ themself in the work, they might begin to understand that they, too, are an iterative conglomeration of dozens of views, perspectives, and poses that might, one day, add up to a singular project.”
Fereidoun Ghaffari was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied painting at the University of Art in Tehran, earning a BFA in 1998 and an MFA in 2002. In 2003, he was accepted as a guest student for a special studies program at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He returned to Tehran in 2004 and taught in universities there until 2006, when he moved to New York and enrolled in the New York Academy of Art, attaining his second MFA in painting in 2008.
In 2013, Ghaffari had a solo show of self-portraits at the Tarahan-Azad Gallery in Tehran. Group exhibitions include EDGE (Emkan Gallery, Tehran – 2018); In Between, Contemporary Iranian Art, curated by Shahram Karimi (MANA Contemporary, Jersey City – 2017); VISAGE: Image of Self, curated by Fereydoun Ave (O Gallery, Tehran – 2016); and SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence, curated by Filippo Fossati (National Museum Academy of Fine Arts, New York – 2015). Awards include a Leslie T. Posey and Frances U. Posey Foundation Grant (Sarasota, Florida – 2008); The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (Montreal, Canada – 2003); and First Prize at the Fifth Biennial of Contemporary Iranian Painting (Tehran – 2000). Ghaffari currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
