New YorkThe Last Strand

Shirin Gallery NY is pleased to announce The Last Strand by Hadi Hazavei, running from January 23 to March 5, 2014. Congruent with the gallery’s focus on unexplored perspectives within modern and contemporary artistic movements from Iran and surrounding regions, the exhibition is a first instantiation of the gallery’s ongoing engagement with Hazavei’s practice.

The Last Strand features two bodies of the artist’s investigative, almost alchemical paintings in dialog with his latest body of sculptural objects, tracing the tension between process and permanence as it is refined over the many years of Hazavei’s artistic practice. The exhibition takes its title from the Farsi expression, Sim-e-Akhar, which connotes the resounding chord that concludes a symphony, or the willfully reckless act of a gambler who throws his last coin on the table with nothing left to lose. Resonating with joyful vitality, “The Last Strand” presents Hazavei’s artistic practice as a life of potentiality that eludes completion.

Hadi Hazavei is an artist, scientist, educator, and scholar known for his multifaceted and mercurial career. His artistic practice takes influence from aesthetic traditions as varied as Persian calligraphy, carpet-weaving, and folk art to Iran’s Saqqakhaneh school and Euro-American Abstract Expressionism. Hazavei attended the University of Tehran’s College of Fine Arts between 1960 and 1968, while teaching high school science in the desert town of Aradan. Hazavei left Iran after nearly a decade of teaching to travel, spending time in Europe, South America, and the United States. He continued to make art throughout his travels, incorporating elements of diverse art historical conventions and cultural motifs into his innovative practice. A dedicated arts educator and scholar, he completed a PhD in Art Education at Columbia University in 1975, before serving as the Head of Art Education at Tehran’s Negarestan Museum between 1977–78. Hazavei has since settled in New York City, where he conducted postdoctoral research in Museum Studies at New York University until 1989. He has authored numerous books on art and education; exhibited work and organized dozens of exhibitions internationally; and produced murals for towns throughout the United States and in his early home in Aradan.