Mohsen Projects were defined in 2015 in three spaces of “Pasio,” “Bam,” and “Hayat” in Mohsen Gallery with the aim of challenging the conventional white cube of art exhibitions, encouraging multimedia and installation artists, and inviting the audience to experience art in a flexible space. The annual open call for Mohsen Projects Grant was implemented in 2017 to support and promote young Iranian visual artists and to exhibit the new currents of Iranian contemporary art.
The selected artists of the third annual Mohsen Projects Grant for “Pasio,” “Bam,” and “Hayat” spaces are Mohsen Rafei, Dorsa Asadi, and Mahsa Parvizi, respectively.
In the lightwell of the gallery building, “Pasio,” Mohsen Rafei has installed a suspended stairway that transports the body from earth to heaven: from darkness to light. Unlike the solid structure of typical building stairs, this unstable stairway behaves in an interactive way: it varies every time someone steps on it. Therefore, each participant has a unique physical experience.
On the rooftop of the gallery building, “Bam,” Dorsa Asadi has set up a translucent, cone-shaped installation: an artificial garden and a fantastical temple. She has reinterpreted the patriarchal structure of temple architecture and geometry and the mythical perception that stems from it in a feminine fashion and she has adorned it with dancing images of various plants and flowers.
Mahsa Parvizi’s installation in the intermediate space of “Hayat” is about public events and their inescapable collective memories. The black-and-white drawings of a narrative in three acts depicts the sad story of an obscure group of people in the corner of a street. These vague scenes are fragments of a larger narrative that, much like the mass media, merely magnify specific aspects of a dire situation.