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Eisegesis: Act II
Navid Azimi Sajadi
5 – 19 October 2018
Eisegesis is a multi-media project, which artist has been busy producing and developing since 2017. In his coming installation, at Pejman Foundation: Kandovan, which will be presented in two separate spaces, each part figuratively and mystically refers to different concepts such as apocalypse and eternity. In the exhibition, by employing ritual concepts and forms, and then appropriating and reproducing them with a multifaceted approach, the artist avoids a direct narrative, in an attempting to challenge the audience to ask questions.
‘Eisegesis: Act II’, a work by Navid Azimi Sajadi is the second part of a three-act project that was preceded by ‘Eisegesis: Act I’ (Electric Room, Dastan:Outside, September 2018, Tehran) and will follow at MACRO (Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma) in 2019.
Navid Azimi Sajadi (b. 1982, Tehran, Iran) is a graduate of Painting from the Faculty of Art and Architecture (Azad University, Tehran) before moving to Rome, later graduating from Accademia di Belli Arti di Roma in 2009. He was awarded the Amedeo Modigliani Foundation Prize in 2009. He gained his Master of Fine Art in Multi Media Sculpture in 2013 from Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, and in the same year was invited to the 9th Shanghai Biennale. In 2018, he was the winner of Premio Combat Museo G. Fattori 9th Edition in drawing and graphic field.
Appearing to the viewer in a process of familiarization and de-familiarization, the installation is based on a reading of ‘ambivalence’ that has been transformed to become a shape that can be demystified only by taking into account one’s presuppositions —in other words, the viewer is to ‘read into’ the work, rather than extract meaning from it in an objective manner.
Grounded in his studies on mythology, cultural history and biblical literature, Navid Azimi Sajadi’s reading of ‘ambivalence’ does not merely reflect a psychological state, but aims to be an aggregation of all possible states. As any provided message or symbol will entail in a derived meaning, the artist has sought not to give away any clues.
The ‘ambivalence’ is both a reference to the way a culture is perceived and interpreted and the layeredness of the experience of reading. The challenge of presenting one interpretation as ‘truth’ or the right reading is one of the main concerns in Navid Azimi Sajadi’s ‘Eisegesis’ project.
In the installation, forms change shape to become a dark void that acts like a container of energies, open to be read, explored and discovered. The second iteration of ‘Eisegesis’ features three-dimensional works, installations, a drawing, and a sound installation in two floor of Pejman Foundation’s Kandovan Building.
Each floor contains references to the ‘non-tangible’ as well as the ‘material’, and the project is bound together using the tones of the sound installation. On the ground level, the two forms connect through a play of sound, light and ultimately time, with the chains working like the supporting mechanism, or the ‘skeletal frame’ of the ambivalent ‘form’.
An ‘imprinted trace’ of those bodies appears as a drawing piece in the basement level, taking the viewer to the final phase of the installation: a golden pyramid whose weight is taken by concrete blocks, as if taken from a different land of another time. Eternalized three-dimensional portraits hang over on each of the pyramid’s faces, with one double-sided portrait suspended on the top.
Working like a spirit that flows life into each of the pieces, through a process of familiarization and de-familiarization similar to the visual aspects of the project, the viewer’s perception of words, tones and time is challenged, illuminated, and left suspended.
Navid Azimi Sajadi (b. 1982, Tehran, Iran) is a graduate of Painting from the Faculty of Art and Architecture (Azad University, Tehran) before moving to Rome, later graduating from Accademia di Belli Arti di Roma in 2009. He was awarded the Amedeo Modigliani Foundation Prize in 2009. He gained his Master of Fine Art in Multi Media Sculpture in
2013 from Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, and in the same year was invited to the 9th Shanghai Biennale. In 2018, he was the winner of Premio Combat Museo G. Fattori 9th Edition in drawing and graphic field.
Audio section technical compose:
Omid Baharvand
Thanks to:
Ali Panahi, Ashkan Ghadim-khani, Arash Ghasem And Kabood Studio