A Light in the Dark

Curator: A piece of bread, some kitchen utensils, a teacup, and a dried lemon positioned alongside glass bottles: these items may all seem commonplace, if not banal. Amir Jadidi is a painter who, by focusing on still life and limiting the themes on which he works, offers the audience distinctive expressive capabilities, in the form of representations. Through his efforts to create, he opens a window onto something beyond simple and familiar subjects. His worldview is based on a type of identical representation, in which one can find traces of the legacy art history has left behind. In his drawings as well, one can witness a manifestation of the presence of light in a dark space. This is even more evident when the artist utilizes the lesser-known method of monotype. This method, which is considered the most painterly of printmaking techniques, can be categorized between painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking. Born in the Iranian city of Rey in 1981, Amir Jadidi currently lives and works in Tehran. An alumnus of the renowned Tehran University of Art in the field of painting, he is now a lecturer in the same educational institution. Among his main research and professional activities, one can mention his theoretical and empirical study on the great masters of European painting, his thesis on “Adaptation in the Tradition of Western Painting”, and a solo exhibition entitled “Still Life Painting” in 2016, in addition to participating in numerous group exhibitions. “A Light in the Dark” is the first collaboration of INJA and the artist.