Keiman Mahabadi's Show at Bavan Gallery
24 Nov 2021Original text in Farsi by Amir Esfandiari
Translated to English by Sara Faezypour
"We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning." (Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation")
In November 2021, Bavan Gallery hosted "For Your Eyes Only", a show of Keiman Mahabadi's (born 1990) artworks. Mahabadi began his artistic activity in the late eighties. He is concerned with the influence of public media and virtual networks in his works. In his recent show, he addressed these issues further and more directly, making works that are concentrated on the accumulation of media data and the virtual space. The installation of the "For Your Eyes Only" series is arranged on both floors of the gallery while the whole space is divided into three parts. The first part, consisting of the entrance, the main space of the ground floor, the staircase, and a part of the second floor, is dedicated to the works that were taken directly from the media productions, the virtual space, as well as, movies and reproduced according to the artist's vision. Keiman Mahabadi has tried to make use of everything in his selection. In other words, the main images and themes of the artworks comprise political issues, social news, personal photos of people, humorous appearances of famous media figures, and so on.
The second part of this collection with the side title "The Monkey Who Knew How to Wait for the Evolution" is designated for the arrangement of drawings, located on the upper floor. The works in this section include monkeys either squatting idly or showing a passive and inefficient presence. Individually and in pairs, they are just observing without any action. The third part of the series, which occupies the middle part of the gallery, is organized in such a way to serve as a connecting line between the other two parts. This section with the side title "Burned" is allocated to the artist's paintings of flames and their outburst within the frame. What is noteworthy in this part is the configuration of the works and their position. Far from the classic framing, the works of this section, are installed in the same way that they were produced, side by side on a long wall with a black background, allowing the audience to see them from both floors of Bavan Gallery.
As mentioned, "For Your Eyes Only" defines its central theme as a satirical look at the visual data of the media (in its extended platforms and meanings). The artist is seeking a way to face the mass of data that fills the world and is growing every moment. The three main parts of the show manifest a path towards the process of this occurrence. The reproduction of media data in the first part, done humorously, somehow reveals the inefficiency of this amount of information and how they are easily forgotten. There is no priority between them in their production, just as social networks benefit from a kind of popular and sometimes vulgar equality. The presence of passive monkeys magnifies this caustic atmosphere, looking, in a way, for a possibility to mock the audience of this extensive media information and images. The other side of this collection is completed when the flames are viewed. They see everything to be dependent on destruction, but they themselves are incompetent and unable to expand. They have also lost the ability to set ablaze and transformed into a mere collection of images to be seen. In other words, they have become part of the media and are placed in this environment themselves.
The pieces of the "For Your Eyes Only" collection are often quick and lacking in detail. They adopt from the images they reproduce like all media events that are rapidly developed, broadcasted, and consumed. In them, a scene of a terrible explosion and a personal portrait of an ordinary person have the same value and have been similarly treated. A sense of euphoria and humor can be seen throughout them all. As far as the visual and historical aspects are concerned, they can be considered akin to the produced works of Pop Art. What they have in common is their inarticulateness. It doesn't matter which part of the collection we follow, they all fit into the same domain; events and moments without any impact, ineffective information, harmless flames, and inactive monkeys. "For Your Eyes Only" is full of events that are created every moment and encompass everywhere and data that are void of meaning, constantly saturating the media, virtual networks, series, movies, and things as such.