Reza Aramesh

The sculptures by renowned Iranian-born artist, whose works engage with such pressing issues as the sublimation of violence by contemporary media.

Working across a wide range of materials and processes, Aramesh examines simultaneously the history of Western art and contemporary commentary on the politics and history of the Middle East, concocting a unique visual language to address the contemporary conditions of violence and bio-politics. His profound understanding of the history of art, film and literature is ever-present in his artwork, spanning through photography, sculpture, video and performance.
As a response to war reportage images from sources such as newspapers, online articles and social media, Aramesh de-contextualises scenes of violence from their origins, exploring the narratives of representation and iconography of subjected body in the context of race, class and sexuality in order to create a critical conversation with the western art history. Reza Aramesh looks at the notion of the historical sublime in art through the filter of contemporary reportage images of violence and horror as portrayed in media and the world of entertainment.

His works are characterized by a great knowledge of the history of art, a deep sense of empathy for the subjects he depicts, combined with irreverence, desire and beauty aimed to wake up our age of tired watching and disinterest. Among his most famous works are the series of limewood sculptures inspired by 17th-century Spanish Christian iconography of martyred saints, Site of the Fall: Study of the Renaissance Garden from a research on reportage images of the Vietnam War and Study of the Head as Cultural Artefacts in which he addressed the sublimation of horror in three marble heads.