XABT

May. 25, 2016

Mohsen Gallery is delighted to announce XABT a comprehensive solo exhibition of sculpture, paintings, mixed media and large-scale installation works by Mojtaba Amini. Drawing on the violence of everyday life that is entwined with personal autobiography, social-political and cultural histories of past and present Iran. Amini’s works present often violent meaning in a contemplative material form.

Amini’s explorations into material and form sees him use animal glue, sheepskin, camel fat, and soap in his works, with all of these natural materials and their transformations used to explore both form and content. These also serving as symbolic representations as the remnants of violence, as he reminds us with the common use of ‘the skin of an animal being changed into a bota bag, its fat has turned to soap, and its bone has become glue.’ Death is a theme recurring throughout Amini’s work and in the series, Death and Drought, large clay vessels are engraved with Arabic words which when read by viewers gives another layer of meaning to what might be initially read as abstract. The series represents the loss of lives and livelihoods at a time of drought, bareness of land resonate poignantly with this now empty vessels.

The exhibition takes as its entry point the Arabic word ‘Xabt’ which translates to encompasses violence and the disorientation that comes as an aftermath of this, with a quest for how meaning is inscribed onto objects by language. On the other hand, the word’s rooted with the camel and bears relevance here as one of the works from Amini’s series Xabt-e Ašwâ, which translates to a camel that cannot see, so would trample on anything, affirms to the way people will do things without insight raising questions from a critical perspective for considering a new visual language for considering the ways form and language are used create and make meaning.

Amini continues to be driven by the impetus to reveal how language transforms the meaning of form, and how nothing we encounter is free from a politics of space, place and historical meanings.

Biography
Born in Sabzevar in 1979, Mojtaba Amini is an artist who works primarily in sculpture, painting and large scale (mixed media) installations. He obtained his Graphic Design Diplpma for Kamal-olmolk Art School in 199, followed by a BA in Painting for Tehran Univeristy in 2008. He has exhibited in Iran and Internationally in renowned arts organisations and galleries including Röda Sten Art Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden, Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, India, Opera Gallery, London, England, Centre of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, Gerorgia and Triumph Gallery, Mosow, Russia.

His work is in important international private collections and for 2013/14 he was awarded of the International Grant Program 2013/14

Amini currently lives and works in Iran