RAWR! - Manhattan - Metal print - Limited Edition of 20 Photograph

I am an Iranian-American photographer and digital artist based in Cambridge, MA. In 1977 Tehran, Iran, prior to the revolution, I received my first camera and thus began my artistic journey, documenting Iranians’ ordinary lifestyle before and after self-imposed turmoil. Following a thirty-year scientific career in United States, I have now recommitted to my artistic practice and currently serves as a co-founder, curator, and resident artist at several gallery spaces in Cambridge. Celebrating urban landscapes, I reconstruct these subjects captured through my lens and use the Fibonacci sequence to aesthetically guide the coloration, patterns and compositions of my artwork, combining my scientific and artistic backgrounds. I have exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, either in solo shows i.e. Art Focus Gallery, Ipswich, MA; Hatch Street Open Studios, New Bedford, MA or in jury-selected group exhibitions i.e. Saatchi Art sponsored TOAF/New York & Chicago; Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge MA; Happenstance International Art Expo, UK; Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, New York I describe my work as exploratory, whimsical, and surreal. My approach is influenced by works of contemporary architectural-surrealist photographers such as Victor Enrich, Filip Dujardin, and Xavier Delory, and geometrical interplay depicted in works of modern abstract expressionist painters such as Miro, Mondrian, and Kandinsky. My Ph.D. training as a scientist has shaped my artistic voice, an effect which can be seen in my most recent series, titled Unreal Reality. In these works, an original photograph shot on location is digitally blended with elements taken from the edges of the frame to create a repeating, expanded landscape. By utilizing the Fibonacci-based sequence of numbers, I produce aesthetically pleasing patterns that build on and reimagine the original image. The project is a subjective approach to photography favoring perception over seeing. It is meant to re-invent the viewers' relationship with the reality of the world around them. The deviation from the norm of realism are emphasized by these large-scale artworks, depicting urban landscapes containing spaces with vast perspectives where buildings soar above the human scale and architectural elements unique to each location produce one of a kind geometric pattern. What drives me as an artist to produce these artworks is the exploratory nature of the process itself.