Javad Modarresi’s mixed-media depictions of Tehran’s facades are an insight to what life is today in the artist’s native country. His realistic portraitures of the city focus on a particular building or neighbourhood, sometimes including characters with troubled faces. Purposely avoiding lush greenery and dazzling sights of mountains surrounding the capital, Modarresi concentrates on soiled walls, shattered windows, and torn curtains. Highly symbolic, his compositions of decaying buildings predict a murky, uncertain future for Tehran’s youth. Several instances of a white plane flying through the city’s menacing sky hint at the idea of leaving everything behind for more promising destinations. In Modarresi’s work, subjects other than the city’s neighbourhoods remain allegories of lost freedom and rapid decay witnessed in post-revolution Iran. Besides painting, Modarresi curates, writes, and is a recognised visual arts critic contributing to various Persian journals such as Tandis, Herfe Honarmand, Golestan-e Honar and Ayeneh-ye Khial.

  

 Born in Mashhad, Iran in 1979, Javad Modarresi earned both his Bachelor and Master of Arts in Painting from Shahed University. He has held solo exhibitions since 2001 in Iran, most recently in 2014 at Azad Art Gallery, and has participated in collective exhibitions in Morocco, England, and Iran. His paintings have been awarded first prize in Persian painting in 2000, selected for the third World of Islam Bienniale in Tehran in 2003, and in 2008, Modarresi received the Cite scholarship from Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art.