About
Mehdi Ghadyanloo uses the illusionistic capacity of painting to make oneiric images with a powerful symbolic charge. Ranging from utopian urban scenes to enigmatic seascapes and playground slides, Ghadyanloo’s subjects are both familiar and uncanny. The drama of light, shade, and color and the artist’s careful attention to perspectival construction unite his precisely rendered paintings, works on paper, and public murals, which employ a broadly accessible visual language with a metaphysical edge.
Ghadyanloo was born in Karaj, Iran, in 1981, and grew up during the Iran–Iraq War, in which his father was a soldier. He began his studies in art by learning traditional miniature painting, which was the only art instruction available to him. He subsequently graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in painting from the University of Tehran and a master’s degree in animation from Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran. While still a student in 2004, he answered an open call from Tehran’s Beautification Bureau for muralists. Over the subsequent decade, he completed over one hundred murals across the city, replacing the propagandistic images that had dominated it since Iran’s Islamic Revolution with public art intended to beautify the urban environment and promote environmentalism and civic harmony.
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Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Frieze Seoul 2023
September 7–9, 2023, booth C14
COEX, Seoul
www.frieze.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Frieze Seoul 2023 with a presentation of contemporary works by gallery artists, including Derrick Adams, Georg Baselitz, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Jadé Fadojutimi, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Jennifer Guidi, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Alexandria Smith, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Richard Wright, among others.
Coinciding with the fair is the arrival of Jiyoung Lee, who was recently appointed to lead the gallery’s operations in Korea. Lee joins Gagosian following nearly fifteen years based in Seoul working on behalf of both Korean and Western galleries. Her appointment builds on the gallery’s establishment of a business entity in Korea last year, and provides for expanded activities in the region.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Seoul 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jadé Fadojutimi, © Jen Guidi, © Alexandria Smith, © Mehdi Ghadyanloo, © Rick Lowe Studio, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano