Hamid Iravani Artworks

Art Statement

Hamid Iravani ArtworkHamid Iravani has a Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies and Psychology and a Master in Urban Planning within the specialized field of Urban Design from Portland State University, Oregon in USA. He is also a contemporary artist painting abstract faces, personalities, attitudes, behavior and demeanor.

I have drawn faces since I was a kid, to challenge myself, because I have always been obsessed about how a few features like two eyebrows, two eyes, one nose and one mouth have determined millions of faces throughout history, present and future, all of which are unique.

I have been developing transportation mathematical models for years, replicating travel behavior by relating trip making with transportation level of service and socio-economic variables.  My paintings reveal and model different behavior and characters by different line strokes, composition and color.

In my paintings, I always initially draw in a mindless stage and later plan the colors.  The different moods that I experience also impacts on the distinctive faces that I paint.

Being in the transportation planning business since the mid-eighties, I have always been concerned how traffic engineering has been ruining the character of our cities in recent decades. Unfortunately, modern cities have been shaped by traffic engineering standards and roads that are treated as conduits or pipelines. Artistic cities such as Rome, Isfahan, Prague, Paris, Florence, San Francisco, Venice, etc. are no longer being planned on the premise and excuse that traffic flows need to be efficient to avoid congestion. The result in fact has been the opposite: not only do traffic conditions on super highways and wide streets fail to avoid congestion, but the human scale of the resulting urban spaces have also been compromised by wider streets developed for cars so that these are now unfriendly and charmless to people. In summary, blame on conventional traffic engineering standards did not necessarily make me an anarchist who violates all standards, but rather led me to an approach by which form defines the standards, and not vice versa. So whereas my paintings lack typical standards as a dominating component, what I paint does include careful rules, composition, use of lines, colors and a notion of how space is allocated in any of the pieces I create.

I do not only paint pretty faces, I also paint bad and ugly faces. More importantly, however, I paint the inside beauty, and the inside uninhibitedness regardless of the surface appearance.

Finally, the poem by the great prominent Iranian poet of the 13th century, Rumi, has had a great influence on me and my painting of faces:

I am a painter, a maker of faces ; every moment I shape a beauteous form,
And then in thy presence I melt them all away.
I call up a hundred phantoms and endue them with a spirit
When I behold thy phantom, I cast them in the fire,
Art thou the vintner’s cup-bearer or the enemy of him who is sober,
Or is it thou who mak’st a ruin of every house I build ?
In thee the soul is dissolved, with thee it is mingled,
So I will cherish the soul, because it has a perfume of thee.”

(Poem by Rumi, translated by Nicholson)

 

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About

Hamid Iravani is a contemporary artist, presently living in Dubai, UAE. He is specialized in painting using mixed-media, painted sculpture and installations. Hamid has a unique style known for painting “Good, Bad and Ugly Faces”.

Selected Recent Exhibitions

Soft Silence of the Art, an exhibition in Atelier Natália Gromicho, Lisbon, Portugal, January 2018

Salwa Zeidan Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE, February March 2017

Various Exhibitions – Norman Felix Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 2014 to August 2016

ProArt Gallery, Dubai, UAE, August 2014

Seyhoun Gallery, West Hollywood, California, USA, January 2014

Seyhoun Gallery, West Hollywood, California, USA, December 2013

Studio Gallery, Irvine, California, USA, November 2013

Education

Studied art, sculpture, pottery, design in Mt. Hood Community College, Portland Community College and Portland State University

Master of Urban Planning, Emphasis in the Specialized Field of Urban Design and Transportation Planning, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1986

Bachelor of Science, Psychology and Urban Studies, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1984

Recent Media Coverage

Transparent Faces, Gulf News, Weekend Review, April 26, 2013

International Art Exhibition, Artist Portfolio Magazine, July 29, 2014

Contact

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Email: hiravani@cenint.com
Mobile: +971 50 659 9808
Address: P.O. Box 500546
Dubai, UAE
 

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