Young Iranian artist Sepideh Sarlak opens her first solo exhibition in Milan, filling the magnificent Spazio CB32 with her large paintings. Enormous canvases that reveal, through vein-like forms and natural branching, the cardiovascular system of our emotions — including those of love. And those of pain.
The spaces of a large photography studio play host to large paintings, large hearts, large canvases traversed by anatomical rivers. Sepideh Sarlak, an Iranian artist, opens her solo exhibition in Milan with a performance of slow, moving and at times mournful Eastern mystical music: in perfect harmony with the atmospheres evoked by her works, on show at Spazio CB32 until the end of November.
The heart has recurred across all of Sepideh Sarlak's exhibitions for years. It takes on different forms and conceals itself within many canvases, yet always radiates its submerged energy outward through networks of veins and rays, irrigating the surrounding space. Her art is moving because it is physiological, anatomical, natural. A powerful lived experience cuts across surfaces treated with great materiality, even cut and stitched back together as in a surgical operation or as in Persian weaving, evoking scars and artisanal looms from her homeland at one and the same time.
The exhibited works — almost all sold on the very evening of the opening, 19 October, though the catalogue is available online — all call upon this same stylistic device. Noble and ancient oil colours settle over photographic cut-outs to recompose a fascinating message. There is no noisy, garish life in these works, but rather a pulsing, subterranean emotion. Some colour fields call to mind putrefaction, from which, however, life is always born. Some textures intersect like roots, yet draw forth diaphanous inflorescences — not lush, not overbearing, not spring-like.
Perhaps this is the secret message of life as Sepideh Sarlak reads it: not to bloom noisily but to survive in venous tones, responding to pain with resilience, with resistance. As a heart does, hidden within our body, alternating red and bruised beats, undaunted, strong but silent.
The key words the artist has used over the years to describe her art are "having an infinity within our finite body", "art as a cure for the soul", "the eye and the light" — words that are often interdependent in ancient Persian poetry, present in her painting, which has at times sought to penetrate Persia, spirituality, wisdom and magic.
The paintings are often very large, with considerable emotional impact. They blend materials from her personal history with those of the Persian tradition — fabrics and textiles whose softness draws one closer to the tender sensibility of the soul — with at their centre the symbol of the heart, which, in interior landscapes, is always intended to represent a source of life.
The exhibition comprises around thirty works, large paintings and smaller but equally interesting pieces: a series of self-portraits on canvas and an intriguing textile exploration of the arterial textures of a heart, a sculpture exalted and given life by the warm light that passes through it.
"Sepideh Sarlak, through her works, reclaims the heart from the romantic flag-waving of past and present — writes the exhibition's curator, Diego Nicolosi — granting it elsewhere, with its anatomy and its original arrhythmia, its abstraction and its irreligious silence. The heart as a tributary of listening. The heart driven by impulse. Le istanze del cuore: the beat and the breath, the voice and the rest, the brain and artifice. K'erd, kardia, as well as herz (and heart) all trace this cord held in tension."
Iranian-born artist Sepideh Sarlak graduated in graphic design from the Honarhaie Tajasomi art school in Tehran, Iran, before coming to Italy to study art, graduating with honours in painting from the Accademia di belle arti di Firenze. She took part in the drawing and painting workshop of Summer Arts at Fresno State University (California). During subsequent specialisations at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and the Saint-Lucas Academy in Ghent, Sepideh Sarlak had the opportunity to exhibit her work, among other venues, at Pitti immagine, "Gat – giovani artisti di talento" within the contemporary art exhibition Artur-OilMust, "Start Point": the first Biennale of young artists in Florence, "All'inizio non era un isola" at the exhibition space "Assab One Cantiere" in Milan, followed by a fine sequence of solo shows: "Architetture interiori" in Florence, "Paesaggi interiori" in Rome at Galleria Otto, "Il sole nel cuore" at the Galleria Immaginaria in Florence, "Immensity" in Tehran at the Haftsamar gallery, and now "Le istanze del cuore" here at Spazio CB 32, until 19 November 2017 by appointment only.
Sepideh Sarlak, 'Le istanze del cuore' is an exhibition curated by Diego Nicolosi. From 20 October to 19 November 2017 by appointment only. Spazio CB32, via Cesare Balbo 32, Milan (M3 Porta Romana)