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Mohammad-Hossein
Maher (b. 1957s
manifestations
continues to
possess him.
He started his
career by
painting t,
Abadan, Iran)
graduated from
the Tehran
College of
Decorative Arts
and has been
painting for the
past 25 years.
As a complex of
mores, creeds,
arts, and
life-styles that
shape the
historical
experience of a
people, culture
in all ithe
people of the
southern regions
of Iran and
continued by
depicting the
general social
mood of the time
and picturing
people’s social
detachment and
unresponsiveness.
Subsequently he
began his
studies on the
characteristics
and potentials
of Persian
Painting
(miniature).
With each
passing phase
his
inquisitiveness
about the
society that he
lives in has
remained the
driving force of
his works. Over
the years,
whether as a
painter or an
art teacher,
Maher has
offered the
fruits of his
cultural
scrutiny to
viewers and the
younger
generation of
Iranian
painters.
The current
exhibit is a
retrospective of
Mohammad-Hossein
Maher's work in
the past decade
that covers four
distinct
periods. His
main concern in
respective
series --
Masks, Myth,
Shock and
Monuments --
is memory and
the role that
historical
experience plays
in the
construction of
culture. In
Masks, for
example, he is
looking from the
outside at how
our constructed
identity has
changed over
time. In
Myths he
reminds us of
the niceties of
a lost
imagination. The
Shock
series
underlines the
violence and
cruelty of this
loss. And,
Monuments is
an attempt to
recover an
identity borne
by historical
heritage. In
each of these
four series,
Maher is looking
at the history
and culture of
his land, and he
levels his
criticism
through a unique
artistic
language.
Monuments raised
to commemorate
an individual or
event in the
past become a
powerful pretext
for the artist
to bring to the
visual realm the
question of an
arrested
collective
memory. By
recasting
ancient stories
and myths from
the past,
moreover, he
creatively
addresses a
narrative
culture with the
attempt to
alleviate social
amnesia. The
current exhibit
is a compendium
of a decade of
Hossein Maher's
penetrating
critique of the
culture and
history of his
land.
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