PRESENTATION
Sepand DANESH
Born 1984, Tehran IRAN
Currently located in Paris, France
To experience the sensory impact of Sepand Danesh's paintings, you need to be able to navigate the various levels of reading that make them up. At the threshold of the first level, we recognize a character. In many of his paintings, this figure is so famous that an impression of obviousness and strange familiarity is established at first contact. In other cases, the figure's celebrity is less a function of the media sphere of modern times than of the timeless renown that envelops the thoughts of the great philosophers, painters, writers and men of letters dear to the artist's repertoire, which he shares with an anonymous crowd: the people of culture.
Once we've taken this first step, we realize that we're being invited to take part in a semiotic operation far more subtle than simple recognition. If we are to make any headway in the enigma, we must resolve to engage our sensitive, mental, psychic and interpretative capacities. Our emotions, in short. For the stakes are high. It's a question of matching sign and meaning. In linguistics, as in didactics, meaning is measured in units and conceived as a contextual phenomenon.
In his paintings, Sepand Danesh has chosen the cube (a square set in space) to express the smallest unit of meaning in his visual grammar. It's only once we've
crossed the threshold of the first level of mimetic structure (avatar as much as indexical prototype) that we come face to face with what lies dormant beneath the figure. Where we thought we'd recognize a character in a combination of cubes we'd been able to decode, we find ourselves immobilized on the second level: that of the sign out of context. In other words, a signifier without meaning. This is because the character in question is always held in a state of latency, frozen in a contradictory movement of rising and falling, pushed into the mouth of an angle that traps him with us in a seemingly hopeless face-off. Except that the apparent incontextuality of the artist's paintings in turn conceals a trapdoor to a third level: that of our subjective experience. Unable to decipher the meaning of a portrait devoid of context, we are forced to turn to our own interiority to establish relationships of meaning, no longer between object (cube) and subject (character), but between subjects (us and the matrix), to which we will agree to associate our mental contents in order to subjectivize it, and thus experience it as an embodied experience.
Sepand Danesh's portraits are therefore stable forms, independent of the figurative context in which they are inscribed, but inversely subordinate to our figurative interpretation. Relative to a perceived or represented state of reality, the ensuing sensitive experience is one of universalism, evoking more the consonance of our subjective mental contents than the dissonance of our objective affiliations.
INTERVIEWS
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.
EXHIBITION
DETAILS
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
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
2024
■ "Fire Corps", Villa Datris Foundation, Iles-sur-la-Sorgue
2023
■ "Summer Mix Vol.1", Tuesday to Friday, Valencia
■ "Brick Games", L21, Balearic Islands
2022
■ "Art Dubai", Dastan Gallery, Dubai
2021
■ "ARCOmadrid", L21 Galley, Madrid
■ "Asia Now", Dastan Gallery, Paris
■ "Portraits of an Era", Hofa Gallery, London
2020
■ "ART021", Dastan Gallery, Shanghai
■ "PULLMAN Artist Playground", 10 locations during one year, France
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
■ "NZ", 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-IN", 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