Shahram
Karimi

Biography: Born in 1957, Iran, Shahram Karimi grew up in Shiraz. He is a self made artist who has been successful both in his own country and in the West. Karimi’s works have been exhibited in numerous countries ranging from Iran, Turkey, Germany, US, and Switzerland to name a few. Shahram Karimi’s paintings portray the dilemma of the contemporary bicultural Iranian who seeks his historical and personal identity by wedding his personal past with contemporary form. Each one of Karimi’s paintings relates a fragment of his memories and national history, each a piece of his personal past. People, flowers, the ambience of an Iranian village stranded on his canvas bespeak of the past simplicity of Iran and yet in the remote corners of the same piece we often come across the depiction of a real historical event blended into the weaves of the artist’s canvas. Thus does the painter strive to unfold the dust of oblivion from his own memory and unveil the identity of the contemporary Iranian lost in a world of a much loved simple past and a fast tracking contemporary present that bears no relationship with the world of his childhood. This is where Karimi realizes the need for elements from his Iranian background and this is where he turns to Iranian poetry to thread it through his works and thereby to leave its mark. The writings in his works are hard to read and are in fact only threads that rise out of the painting to join its various corners together and to leave the reader with the unforgettable remembrance of where it all stemmed from: the Persian poem that Iranians take such pride in and which to them is the single indivisible cultural element they all embrace. And yet the painter goes even further: the separate frames of memory he leaves in various corners of his work rise from his personal conscious and unconscious. Karimi’s misty background greys and blues force the viewer to witness how what we see as memory still lives on in us to control, influence and shape our present. Shahram Karimi is presently living and working in Germany and the United States.  Shirin Neshat On the Works of Shahram Karimi ‘In an era when Globalism has become an integral aspect of the post modern man’s experience, the Iranian born artist, Shahram Karimi, living in Germany, truly represents such trans-­‐cultural currents and realties in the context of contemporary art. His aspirations are at once rooted in his personal cultural history such as the traditional Persian Miniature paintings, his subsequent life in exile and exposure to the history of abstract, minimal and conceptual art of the West. Karimi has arrived at a unique form which combines both aspects of seemingly diverse cultures in an artistic language which transcends the boundaries of such localities. Karimi’s paintings follow the same principals as those of classical Persian Miniature paintings, mainly in respect to the absence of perspective. The use of narrative elements and inscription of text over imagery and his minimal abstractions of visual iconography bind him to Western art. Poetry plays a major role in Karimi’s creative vocabulary. He expands on the rich tradition of poetry which has been recognized as the most vital aspect of Iranian culture. As a poet, in an unprecedented way, he incorporates verbal and visual metaphors in parallel forms to provoke and express distinct emotions. In his exploration into the realm of media, Karimi makes a video which in my view becomes an extension of his paintings and poetry. In this video, shot in Egypt, the artist offers a new experience for the viewer. One senses an obscure travel through Karimi’s paintings. The strength lies in the ultra simplicity, raw and casual use of camera to capture the aura of the spaces that he encounters. There is an immediate emotional response to these spaces that suggests the notion of ‘absence’ of human body and the presence of a ‘place’ which remains. Karimi’s most recent adventure into installation art is yet another poetic gesture with deeply humanistic and political edge, treated with the same level of abstraction and modesty. Here portraits of ‘shoes’ become reminiscent of the ‘absence’ of the physical body. This work suggests a new direction for a ‘ global’ artist who is seeking a delicate balance between Persian aesthetics and Western expression to arrive at an art which becomes truly universal.’  Shirin Neshat   Resume of Shahram Karimi  Born 1957 in Shiraz, Iran  Lives and has worked since 1988 in Germany and New York  SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 The Garden is My Skin, Kunsthaus Troisdorf, Germany  2016 The Cold Earth Sleeps Below (in Collaboration with Shoja Azari), Leila Heller Gallery, New York, United States 2015 Remembrance , Syra Arts, Washington 2015 Remembrance , Gallery Syra, Washington D.C., United States 2015 Longing for Myself, Brigitte Schenk Gallery, Germany 2015 Open the Door, Kunsthaus Troisdorf, Germany  2014 The Rose Garden of Remembrance, Mah Art