PRESENTATION
Sepand DANESH
Born 1984, Tehran IRAN
Currently located in Paris, France
Sepand Danesh is a visual artist whose work has developed over more than twenty years across drawing, painting, and sculptural installation. His practice is rooted in a personal history marked by political violence and exile. Coming from a family deeply affected by the upheavals of post-revolutionary Iran, he grew up in the shadow of his grandfather’s execution, who had been involved in the Nojeh coup attempt against Ruhollah Khomeini, as well as within the broader context of the Iran-Iraq war, which profoundly shaped his environment and his relationship to the world.
His childhood unfolded in an atmosphere of tension and violence, particularly within a harsh post-war school system. At the age of twelve, he left Iran, undergoing a sudden rupture marked by the loss of language, cultural, social, and class references. This displacement initiated a lasting experience of being “in-between,” where body and mind no longer fully coincide, existing instead within distinct spaces.
It is in this context that drawing first emerged as a tool for reconstruction. His early works, composed of fragmented and repetitive forms, were less acts of representation than attempts to rebuild an intermediate space between an inner experience that was difficult to articulate and an external world that had become inaccessible. This initial phase laid the foundation for an ongoing artistic inquiry into fragmentation, tension, and the conditions of passage.
Gradually, this practice expanded into painting and spatial exploration. The artist developed a distinctive visual language structured around angular dispositifs (spaces without floor or ceiling, unstable and constraining) within which bodies in transformation appear, often distorted or disfigured. The angle becomes a central form: both a site of blockage and constraint, and a point of transition toward imaginative projection. Space is no longer represented, but activated as an operative force capable of producing sensory experiences of tension, confinement, and opening.
His work, presented both in the studio and in public space, is now part of a research-creation approach at the intersection of art, philosophy, anthropology, and studies on exile and trauma. Through his doctoral project, Between Two Worlds: Forms, Experiences, and Devices of Passage, he extends this exploration by considering passage not as a simple transitional moment, but as a form of existence in its own right, defined by a dynamic tension between constraint and projection.
INTERVIEWS
Interview "Vulnérables"
An interview about the sculpture I created for the exhibition Vulnérable at La Grande Chapelle of the Hôpital Salpêtrière in Paris, exploring resilience, hospital mechanics, the search for identity, disfiguration, and reconstruction.
Interview "Répétitions et différences"
L’œuvre de Sepand Danesh s’articule autour du pixel aussi bien en 2D avec la peinture qu’en 3D avec la réalisation de sculptures. Ces dernières prennent place dans l’espace public pour les versions les plus maximalistes. Ces tableaux, véritables trompe-l’œil, donnent à voir l’illusion d’un accrochage dans un angle grâce à de nouveaux jeux de perspective, l’œuvre est directement dans un décor, elle est mise en contexte.
Phenomenology & Roy Lichtenstein's
In 2023, I was invited by Guillaume Levy Lambert, the director of Artporters gallery, for a solo show in Singapore. Here you can find an uncut conversation in both English and french about the phenomenological approach of Roy Lichtenstein, Pop Art as a pop-up phenomenon in opposition to the pop of popular and the impact of the monocular vision in the phenomenology of perception.
EXPO DUBAI, French Pavillon
An interview at my studio with the French pavillon team of the Expo Dubai Universal Exhibition.
I will show the 1/12 size model of my installation and talk about the idea behind this project, the key fact being that all cubes are painted in camaïeu, (monochrome of 4 different shades of each colors).
This installation was a two years work project with a total of 25 sculptures.
Pullman Hotels & Persian Mythology
Based on an epic poem of the 12th century by the Persian poet Attar, this interview is an introduction about 30 paintings representing birds in triangular shape canvases.
I will talk about the Simorgh, mythological creature in Persian culture and its influence on the fragmented birds I made for this project.
Expo Dubai 3D views
In this interview about the installation of 25 sculptures for the Universal Exhibition in Dubai, the lead was about the main idea behind the project.
We can see some 3D models of the French Pavillon and also views from my studio.
BOOKS
DANESH PHILOSOPHY
Prophecies of painting
Text by Michel Cegarra
Works are born by the millions in the artists' studios. Once they have become images, they are plunged into the ocean of the Internet where they gravitate like living organisms and fulfill their destiny as a medium for lives, thoughts and bodies. This enlarged communication, crossed by dissonances and fragmentation, does not cease to duplicate its components, as would nature itself in the profusion of its creations. The entropy and the chaos which govern the natural world are also accompanied by settings in order and devices constantly rearranged of regulation where the signs of the origin are swallowed up.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION
Tehran Zin
Works are born by the millions in the artists' studios. Once they have become images, they are plunged into the ocean of the Internet where they gravitate like living organisms and fulfill their destiny as a medium for lives, thoughts and bodies. This enlarged communication, crossed by dissonances and fragmentation, does not cease to duplicate its components, as would nature itself in the profusion of its creations. The entropy and the chaos which govern the natural world are also accompanied by settings in order and devices constantly rearranged of regulation where the signs of the origin are swallowed up.
HUB ZERO
Epic [rewind]
Text by Nina Leger
Faced with this grid running to the
extinction of the glance, one
understood the story
that animated what, from the start,
seemed to be disorder.
It had begun like this: the world had
emptied itself. The things, did not
disappear
disappeared, they were integrated,
absorbed,
amalgamated,
devoured by walls or floors,
caught in the mass,
impossible to extract.
DANESH PHILOSOPHY
Monography
Text by Bernard Comment and Sally Bonn
The research of the French-Iranian artist Sepànd Danesh gathers around a world nourished by silences where each gesture and each detail proposes a free interpretation. His works admit the evidence of a solitude not imposed but governed by the history of the artist, whose family fled Iran after years of war.
ACHIEVEMENTS
PUBLIC & PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
■ Fundación MEDIANOCHE0 2021
■ Groupe Accor 2020
■ Fond National d’Art Contemporain 2019
■ Fondation Neuflize obc, 2018
■ FRAC Poitou-Charentes 2017
■ Collection Société Générale, Paris 2017
■ Fondation Jean François Prat, 2015
■ Fondation Colas, Paris 2012
SOLO SHOW
2026
■ "FROM FLAMES TO FLOWERS", FFF, Seoul
■ "Rise of a New Order", Lalaland Galley, Paris
2025
■ "La treversée", A2Z Art Gallery, Paris
■ "Odradek", JDM Gallery, London
■ "Dans la peau du rêve", Chateau des Charmettes, Torcy
2023
■ "A Universe At The Corner", FFF Gallery, Seoul
■ "In The Land Of Te Blind", The One-Eyed Is Roy, Art Porters, Singapore
2022
■ "Fear Of Collapse", Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles
■ "Universal Exhibition", French Pavillion, Expo Dubai, Dubai
2020
■ "Moi, mon aigle et mon serpent", Galerie Backslash, Paris
2019
■ "Degré zéro du hub", Cnap, Sun7 Runspace, Besançon
■ "Introduction to the hub", Galerie Dastan, Teheran
■ "Symptôme", Espace Scarabé, Chambery
2018
■ "HUBTOPIA", Galerie Backslash, Paris
2017
■ "Fragments d’un voyage immobile", curated Sally Bonn, Galerie des Grands Bains Douches, PAC Marseille
2016
■ "Des ruines pour origine", BACKSLASH, Paris
■ "Encyclopedia Of The Imagination", Drawing Now, Paris
2015
■ "Apostrophe Muette", Art en Directe, La Vitrine am, Paris
2014
■ "Angle Mort", Cité des Arts, Chambéry
2013
■ "Il va crever ton Bonsaï", Galerie Nivet-Carzon, Paris
GROUP SHOW
2026
■ Une Rose, Milles Mondes, A2Z Galley, Paris
■ Parrotgration, Jiushi Art Space Museum, Shanghai
2025
■ Vulnerables, Grande Chapelle Hopital Salpetriere, Paris
■ Dastan Collective, Zaal & Simine, Paris
2024
■ Faire Corps, Villa Datris Foundation, Iles-sur-la-Sorgue
■ Ultimus Spectaculi, Galerie Praz Delavalade, Paris
■ CONFLUENCES, Galerie Cohle, Paris
2023
■ Summer Mix Vol.1, Tuesday to Friday, Valencia
■ Brick Games, L21, Balearic Islands
2021
■ Portraits of an Era, Hofa Gallery, London
2020
■ PULLMAN Artist Playground, 10 locations during one year, France
■ Virtual Group Show, Dastan, AI San, Sophie Tappeiner, Bosse & Baum, Clima, The Love Guru, Online
2019
■ Ligne de vie, une exposition de légende, Museum of Contemporary Art MACVAL
■ Aux sources des années 80, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les sables d’Olonne
■ Cloture, espace Arrondit, Paris
■ Feux, espace Arrondit, Paris
■ Place Oddity, Huet-Repolt Residency, Art Brusells
2018
■ Le Gymnasium Sacré, Art Dubai Fair, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
■ Future Is Collective, galerie Backslash, Paris
■ …et refaire le monde, galerie Bessieres, Chatou
■ Point Contemporain, Villa Belleville, Paris
2017
■ Numero Zero, curated by Sally Bonn, FRAC PACA, Marseille
■ L’exercice du ressort, Galerie Michel Journiac, Paris
2016
■ Sans limites : de l’objet à l’oeuvre, Parcours Saint Germain, Les Deux Magots, Paris
■ Le contemporain dessiné, commissariat d’Agnès Callu, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
■ Demain, dès l’aube, Primo Piano, Paris
■ Stall-I, carte blanche à Gauthier Le Rouzic, Cité des arts, Chambéry
■ DRAW, Le Silencio Club, Paris
2015
■ "(et pour) quelques minutes de plus", curated by AFTER HOURS, La Générale en Manufacture, Sèvres
■ "Fragments", BACKSLASH, Paris
■ "Chercher le garçon", curated by Frank Lamy, Musée d’Art contemporain du Val de Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine
■ "La carte postale revisitée", curated by Caroline Hancock & Paule-Emmanuel Odin, La Compagnie, Marseille
■ "Printemps de l’Art Contemporain", La Compagnie, Marseille
■ "Autoconstruction", UC gallery, Paris
2014
■ "Confort Moderne", Collectif Idiom, Galerie Clovis XV, Brussels
■ "Plan #1", Underconstruction Galerie, Paris
■ "L’âme et la bête", Galerie l’Antichambre, Chambery
■ "YIA", Underconstruction Galerie, Carreau du Temple, Paris
■ "Fondation Colas", Paris
■ "ENS Art et Métiers", Paris
■ "5ème Biennale de Marrakech", MINT & AWIIILY, Maroc
■ "Twins", curated by Alexandre Oustinov, Beaux-Arts de Paris
■ "Aliennnation Group Show #3", commissariat de \ curated by Hicham Bouzid, Le 18, Marrakech
■ "Aliennnation Group Show #2", Atelier 31, Paris
2013
■ "58ème", Salon de Montrouge
■ "Docks Art Fair", Galerie L’antichambre, Lyon
■ "La Suite #1", Galerie l’Antichambre, Chambéry
■ "Paysage domestique", Abbaye de Léhon, Dinan
ART FAIRS
2026
■ Art Paris Art Fair, Paris
2025
■ Art021, Shanghai
■ Abudhabi Art, Abudhabi
■ The Preview Seoul, Seoul
■ Art Basel, Hong Kong
2023
■ The Armory Show, New York
2022
■ Art Dubai, Dubai
2021
■ ARCO, Madrid
■ Asia Now, Paris
2020
■ ART021, Shanghai