Statement:

For Taha Heydari (b. 1986, Tehran, Iran), painting is the ‘what’ that affords an investigation of the ‘how’.

The artist’s solo exhibition 12 Volt Fire presents a survey of paintings of seemingly absurd and disparate moments related to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with the aim of investigating its metaphysics, and of reframing it as a dynamic network of ‘actants’ that traverse socio-political, technological, mythical, and collective forces.

Here, he utilises notably vibrant hashed lines reminiscent of digital fabric to deliberately reflect the materiality of his digital source imagery.

Despite their apparent vividity, the horizontal and vertical lines suggest forms that hover between absence and presence.

Between these lines, questions begin to emerge: not only of the role of the depicted events in the revolution, but also of the role of ‘image’ itself as an active entity.