Katibeh #06 Painting

Mahmoud Saleh Mohammadi is an Iranian artist born in Teheran in 1979. He started his artistic career in Iran, studying as a painter at the Art University in Tehran and improving his education at the Brera Academy of Milan in Italy, where he graduated in Fine Arts in 2017. He currently lives and works in Milan and Antwerpen. His research is rooted into socio-cultural, artistic and relational integration, developed by using different contemporary art languages such as painting, site-specific installations and performances. Mahmoud touches upon his ethnicity, history and tradition of origin. By embellishing them with different concepts, he broadens the expected visual aesthetics associated with Iran. His art offers a vision that reconciles the past with future possibilities, traditions of several cultures of his encounter with innovation, interiority with aesthetic inquiry. Fascinated and inspired by intrinsical beauty, Mahmoud starts from firm materials, treating them with respect, embracing the elements of raw textures and the histories they carry. Each material contains endless possibilities, he creates harmonious pieces containing a personal and cultural-historical soul. Radiating simplicity and modesty, his paradoxically complex works reflect personality and attract curiosity. This results in contemporary and conceptual artworks, minimalistic, abstract, and iconographically strong installations. Living in Milan for the past ten years, he worked towards a concrete artistic language, combining Persian and Western heritages, inspired by specific memories and concepts of different cultures he comes in contact with. His works reference universal languages such as mathematics and the combination of full and empty space, combining form and rythm. Believing in the strength of the arts of telling stories, impacting social realities and individual lifes, he starts from his own philosophical reflections on specific societal situations he encounters, translating them into visual language. During the first lockdown of 2020, he made the move to Antwerpen. This new context broadened his strong visuals, opening them up for different viewpoints as well as possibilities.