Through Darkness...

Lit Shadow series (2012-2015)
Through Darkness...
Mohammad Hossein Emad has become well established in his career. This is a statement that could serve eitheras a complimentor a criticism since finding apersonal language and establishing that language is a significant step in any creative process. But more important, in my opinion, is to maintain the process withoutrepeating oneself. Not many outgrow this first stage of their artistic practice. That is why the exhibition of renowned artists feels to be as familiar as the artist is, even before it is on view. The audience knows what to expect as a whole. There are only a handful of artists who get to rebel against their usual patternor succeed in keeping their eye on the ball once they decide to surpass themselves.
In this exhibition, however, Emad has succeeded to defamiliarize his audience's approach on the one hand and to find solid reasoning to transcend himself on the other. The works on exhibit are audaciously disconnected from his previous works while the forms are still comparable. He has cleverly connected the recent works to the older ones through shape. To put it more simply from a morphological standpoint, the works on exhibit are very similar to his wooden sculptures - the practiced forms he has previously presented in various ways, always using wood as his primary substance. It is the material, in fact, that sets the two periods apart. In his latest works, the plasmic feel of metal and plastic replaces the nostalgic feel of wood.
For those who knew Emad through his wooden sculptures, it is not easy to undergo the emotional transition that results from the feel of the condensed sheets of cartonplast, polycarbonate and aluminum.
Those who were drawn to the past by his previous works must now ponder in the present and the future when seeing his new creations. Although Emad has refined the roughness of his used material, his recent artworks, still, are notas restful as his wooden sculptures were. They carry within them the haste of modern life. Thematerials he has used play a key role in generatingasemantic context as such. This has made it possible for time to shift in the reading of his artworks: the now and the future instead of the past. And this is what proves to be the turning point of his recent exhibition. Still, his latest works areas mysterious as the older ones were, even though the audience experiences and perceives the mystery in an entirely different way. In his wooden sculptures, the audience travelled from the outside to the inside whereas this process is reversed in this latest series. The light targeted at the heart of the sculpture grabs the attention of the audience or makes them start from that point as well. When it radiates outside the sculpture through the cells, it casts its meaningful shadow on the floor. Light is seen through darkness and the outside becomes meaningful through the inside... maybe a path to leave behind the viciousness of the livid and the sometimes dark aura of this life...and maybean exhibition of darkness to express gratitude for light...
Mohammad Parvizi
Fall 2013