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The first solo UK exhibition of the Iranian artist’s large-scale abstract paintings
Rosenfeld Porcini is pleased to present Revealing Harmonies by the emerging Iranian artist
Mehran Elminia. This will be the first solo UK exhibition of Elminia’s work and will include oil
and mixed media works on canvas displayed over both floors of the gallery.
Elminia works on a canvas attached to the wall but his improvisation does not contain any of
the violence found in works by artists such as Jackson Pollock. Working no more than 1 metre
from the large canvas throughout, he eschews any idea of figuration; figures can appear, but
the artist is oblivious until he steps back to look at the finished work. His purely emotional
response to his art and the total oneness he achieves between body, brush and canvas has the
capacity to create works of great emotional intensity.
Elminia comments: “When I am in front of the canvas, I liberate myself from all feelings of
existence. I no longer exist, because that only creates a limit. I try and allow chaos and the
actual moment to meet and I become a brush in the hands of chaos.”
The artistic search for Elminia is to find the poetic essence within the spontaneous act of
painting. The American critic Clement Greenberg famously wrote in the 50s about the need for
painting to be in and of itself, thereby avoiding all need for narration. Painting no longer
needed to recount anything but instead acquire a new poetry in as much as it was about the
act itself.
Music functions with both sound and time and the listener, not contending with either a literal
or descriptive line, can react with complete emotional freedom. Kandinsky in a far earlier
epoch than Greenberg, believed that if painting was concerned with narrative it would never
be able to rival music.
There is a strong connection between Greenberg’s ”art should be of and for itself” and the
German idea of Gesamtkunstwerk and Kandinsky believed art should have this totality of
approach but it could only be attained once the shackles of narrative were left behind.
Elminia’s paintings are produced by improvisation in the same way that a jazz musician like
Keith Jarrett plays his solo concerts, working in a state of total freedom, literally sitting at the
piano and playing. Elminia’s works can be the product of almost 24 hours continual painting so
that his brush becomes a complete extension of his inner soul. His declared aim is to arrive at a
state of ecstasy where all knowledge of the past is absent and he can achieve a total symbiosis with the moment. The visual complexity, richness of brush strokes and vibrant colours draw us
in gradually so that it is possible for the viewer to attain an almost trance like state as we, little
by little, enter the artist’s visual universe. The endless brush strokes create a further effect of
staring into a spider’s web and losing oneself in a new and rarefied world.
Mehran Elminia was born in Tabiz (Iran) in 1975. He obtained his masters in art from Rome
University of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Iran as both as an artist and a teacher.
Elminia has exhibited with several galleries and art fairs in Italy including Rome International
Art Fair and Milan International Art Fair along with solo exhibitions in Iran. He has further
contributed to group exhibitions in Dubai and Rome and was featured in the 2010 Biennale of
Contemporary Religious Art, Stauròs Museum, Italy. This will be his first solo UK exhibition.
Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery
Founded in June 2011 by Ian Rosenfeld and Dario Porcini, directors of Italy’s Galleria Napoli
Nobilissima, Rosenfeld Porcini occupies a prime location in the heart of the dynamic gallery
district of London’s Fitzrovia. With 3,000 square feet of gallery space, Rosenfeld Porcini has a
strong international outlook committed to showing contemporary artists from around the
world with an innovative exhibitions programme. Old Master and Modern shows will
occasionally be presented, either monographic or themed, within the context of the
contemporary space, exploring a firm curatorial belief in the continuity that underlies the story
of art.
Exhibition Schedule
25 July – 20 Sept 2012 Mehran Elminia: Revealing Harmonies
28 Sept – 8 Dec 2012 The Continuation of Romance: Painting – An Interrupted Discourse
Gallery Address: 37 Rathbone Street, London W1T 1NZ
Telephone No: +44 [0]20 7637 1133
Email: isabelle@rosenfeldporcini.com
Website: www.rosenfeldporcini.com
Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Goodge Street
Opening Times: 11am-7pm Tuesday to Saturday
For further information please contact Hermione Wace at Paget PR
t: 020 7323 6963, e: hermione@pagetpr.com
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