Stuttering Exhibition
Sis Art Space, Bojnourd, Dec. 2023
Author: Majid Heidari
Masoud Zamani's artistic endeavors encompass design, painting, digital images, posters, and videos. His works delve into visual elements such as fish, crows, hands, and human heads, presenting a graphic expression. Typically, we encounter a single element undergoing alterations, capturing attention. For instance, letters may intertwine, pass through objects, connect with threads, or intertwine with flowers and trees. Various animals appear in his images, including a melting rooster, symbolic crows, and a particular emphasis on fish scales. Camels, snakes, butterflies, white beetles, and dogs are also present in his works.
In many of his works, Masoud Zamani has focused extensively on the hands and heads of humans. The hands take on various postures, coming out of a pillow, gesturing, indicating a symbol, playing basketball, holding a birdcage, playing strings, cradling a baby, expressing pain, or simply suspended in a portrait. On the other hand, the head or face also occupies a significant portion of Masoud's attention. Faces undergo meaningful changes concerning different individuals and subjects. The erasure of a baby's face, the earthy transformation and coloring of the face of the string player Veli Rahimi, the simplicity of Maestro Shajarian's face in two colors, the melting and flowing of a face, the role of the wall in finding a face in theater posters, the emergence of a face in Kasra Abedini's texture, the melting and deforming of a face in a timeless and placeless state, the distortion of a face into a crow's head, placing a face in a cage, the dissolution or decay of a face in design, the merging of a face with an eggshell, and the separation of the head from the body are all depicted in his art.
The artist, considering his artistic background and profession, has chosen his own specific visual elements and has also achieved his artistic expression. His artistic expression is largely attentive to the texture of visual elements. Therefore, it seems that through analyzing the texture in his works, a more comprehensive narrative of his artistic creativity can be obtained. In one drawing, we see a man dressed in black walking with a cane, and his head has transformed into a crow. The crow's head is not simply resting on the hunched old man's body; rather, the lines are worked in a way that indicates intertwining. In other words, the texture of the crow's body and the clothing of the old man in black has undergone transformation and change in a manner that these two visual elements have embraced each other's formal qualities and even their nature. This interweaving of textures is observable in many of the artist's works. In many of Masoud's works, we witness more than a simple coexistence of visual elements; rather, we see the interweaving and merging of the textures of these elements. The artist has taken special care and attention to ensure that the elements come together as one, although in some instances, tension is evident in moments of the textures merging. This tension in texture is well observed in drawings featuring individuals whose heads are in the process of melting. Additionally, in heads that are detached from the body, where the facial texture is boiling from within and undergoing shape changes or melting, or in the tension and melting in the texture of hands, the body of a rooster, and plastic, or the intertwining of the texture of the head, the body of a fish, and a goat's branch.
In other words, for Masoud, texture is the foundation of achieving a personal artistic expression. He is concerned with how elements come together existentially and how these existential states establish metaphorical relationships with each other. Perhaps the sentence written on the wall of the Stuttering Exhibition alludes to this concern: "Like water hitting a rock."
His attention to tension in texture and moments that display this tension reflects the existentialist approach of the artist to graphics and visual representation. This means that he seeks the unity of visual elements and derives significance from the study of moments of separation (or, in his own words, "moments of disconnection" as mentioned in the exhibition video). Such an approach distinguishes the artist from other graphic designers or illustrators who focus on formal play at the surface level, framing, typography, and playing with the form of words.
I can extend this particular artistic statement to his personality as well. In the sense that the artist lives in a small city like Bojnourd, but over the years, he has been a notable organizer of significant artistic events, acting as a bridge between different generations of artists. He has not accepted geographical marginalization and has played the role of an artist-activist to unleash the artistic potentials of his native region. He is a contemporary artist as his artistic activities are a response to the conditions in which he thrives. The Stuttering Exhibition serves as a mirror reflecting what is happening in the society: stuttering, interruption, or, in my description, fracture.
In a video presented at the Sis Art Space, we hear from the artist himself that the idea for the exhibition series was inspired by the interrupted moments on Instagram Live during the COVID-19 era. In the video editing, we are also constantly witnessing stuttering or, in other words, the moment of interruption. In my opinion, paying attention to the "moment of interruption" or fracture rather than focusing on moments when Instagram videos flow smoothly emphasizes a metaphorical emphasis on a fracture that has occurred in society. Today's society is full of various fractures, especially the ones created between the past and the present. These fractures deepen every day, and we all know that unpredictable events can occur at any moment, making us witnesses to moments like the portraites in the Stuttering Exhibition.