Ghazal is a poetic form with rhyming couplets
and a refrain, each line sharing the same meter.
Reza Lavassani is renowned for his large size sensual and poetic papier-mâché sculptures, and his dream-like paintings.
Standing opposite a three-meter long installation, his masks were an imposing set conveying a sense of drama and passion at the 2013th Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair. His ‘Life’ installation presented at Assar in 2014 too, was an experience of falling into a fable. His trees, his waves, his horses, his musical instruments, everything in his world is in movement, so playful and so very truly imaginative, they could come to life. This is the world of Reza Lavassani known and cherished by many who have followed him throughout the years.
Lavassani’s zeal for poetry is remarkable and his belief in the non-conventional result of it in our culture, outstanding. With his childlike temperament mixed with utter seriousness of a master craftsman, he talks about each and every one of his works, the process involved and, what we fall short of when not carefully looking, with sheer passion. A sort of passion and dedication that empowers vision and imagination, and that gives everything in his works arrangement and order. Following Lavassani’s chain of thoughts can be a pleasure or a struggle, but one thing is certain, he demands his audiences’ utmost care when faced with the difficult task of looking.
His fascination and serious dedication to ‘process’, however, has little been explored. Behind our eyes, every single piece of his creation undergoes a long process of planning and exploration; often starting from a thought that almost always begins in a poem, a Ghazal, that in his view is this land’s cultural chef d’oeuvre and the most civilised form of communication there is. These thoughts are then transformed into series of drawings and compositions that eventually result in multi dimensional pieces or a painting.
It would be a hard struggle to count just how many drawings Lavassani has made in his career, but he never seizes the opportunity to remind us that it is in fact his drawings that are his real art. He believes in the process, a route and discovery more than the result we see.
Going through hundreds of his drawings, one realises that hardly any artist of our generation has kept and cherished his or her sketches as dearly as he has. The fluid quality of the Persian language and the sense of poetic approach that throughout history has resulted in architecture, design and culinary manifest itself in Reza Lavassani’s creations and definitely in his drawings which he believes to be the most liberating and the essence of art making. His lines, shapes, and pen movement are theatrical expressions in form of a poetic monologue streaming from his drawings giving them their special characteristics.
Looking closely, what Lavassani has achieved, is a contemporary take on a modernised language and his quest to reflect Ghazal in vision.
This exhibition is an investigation into the private archive of Reza Lavassani’s world of drawings and his approach towards process put into order never presented before. The selection aims to showcase a series of predetermined compositions and the raw thoughts of an artist who has lovingly been intimidated by a blank piece of paper. The show will present the audience with techniques and approach of one of Iran’s most celebrated sculptors at work today. In this exhibition Lavassani speaks with his imagination and what he visualizes in the end, it shall then be the duty of us as his audiences to look and read Ghazal in his lines.
