These acrylic paints create a feeling of home. In 2015, an Iranian-born painter living in Singapore include in a group exhibition of Iranian artists in Hong Kong. The show was aptly titled A Postcard from Persia. The artist observes each of us is trying to find a balance between our roots and our aspirations. The act of juggling becomes more precarious in our age of globalization, where our future is often far from home.
Lost from sight
National identity, displacement, and migration weigh heavily on our contemporary consciousness. We are bombarded with disturbing images of displaced citizens accompanied by apocalyptic narratives from our would-be world leaders. The general message interrupts our beloved notions of cultural order and family stability. Yet paradoxically, the overload of shocking images and overwhelming headlines only serve to cloud our senses and turn off our emotions.
Andy Warhol’s famous Death and Disaster series, which includes works with repeated images of road accidents and other catastrophes, explores the dampening effect that the media have on the human psyche. Unfortunately, those works, and the intellectualized elitism they spawned, only pushed our collective mind away from a place of empathy. Having genuine feelings in the face of a deeply troubled world or a real concern for the well-being of the human community at large requires a vulnerable posture that can be useless; perhaps it is better to take refuge in ironic positions, nihilistic reflections, and intelligent, philosophical arguments. In a sense, we have all become displaced: glassy faces, addicted to digital technology, without contact with the world, with each other, and above all, the emotional visits that carve our souls.
Sensual painting
Sensual one line drawing and painting, by its very nature visceral communicator, can offer a sure way back to humanity’s disordered and imperfect state. Esmaeilipour’s paintings provide such a path; they initially advertise a hyper-realistic simulation that, upon closer inspection, resembles the unlikely scenarios and displaced objects of dreams and hallucinations. Moving from the enigmatic to the surprisingly incongruous, his imagery is symbolic of our current human condition, what the French call dépaysement, a general feeling of poverty, inhabiting a time and place that is fragmented and disconnected from its roots.
Be an artist
Esmaeilipour remembers his first encounter with painting; when he was still a teenager, he came across a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh in a book on Van Gogh’s letters. He was a self-portrait. Esmaeilipour adds: I was hungry to learn how to paint this way. But my country was at war, and I was soon drafted into the national service. Years later, Van Gogh appeared to me in a dream: he told me I had to follow my passion. I didn’t know where to start. Eventually, I found a good teacher in Tehran, Iran, who introduced me to major media and artists. At first, I fell in love with Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer and started focusing on watercolor. I worked on a farm to support myself. My first exhibition was of watercolors representing the things surrounding me there; farmers, stables, and cows were my first models.
Discovering acrylic
Wanting to work on a larger scale than he could achieve with watercolor, Esmaeilipour began experimenting with oil, but he wasn’t happy with the results. I was looking for something similar to watercolor but more powerful. I mean once, 27 years ago in Iran with no material or the Internet. Everything was limited, and if you were lucky enough to find something, it was expensive and out of your league.
Eventually, an art supply supplier obtained small sets of acrylics in six-color boxes for Esmaeilipour but could not provide any information on working with them. Esmaeilipour found them water-soluble and quick-drying, properties he knew from his work with watercolors. The feeling was great, recalls Esmaeilipour. I started looking for acrylic paints everywhere. When family and associates moved away, I asked them to produce my acrylics. I used all the profits from my third solo exhibition on acrylics! When I went to Singapore, making art stocks just got a lot easier. Today I work with most acrylic brands; my favorite is gold because the color is so vibrant, the value is rich, and the color doesn’t change when it dries.
Painting of all genres
Esmaeilipour’s poetic realism finds expression in three distinct genres: imaginative still life, narrative portraits, and paintings of expressionist figures. Across genres, Esmaeilipour’s signature and enigmatic arrangement of objects and elements offer overlapping visual intrigue with symbolic meaning and narrative intent. His figurative paintings, which the artist calls Immigrant Series, employ elements of collage in addition to acrylic paint.
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Immigrant series
In Immigrant # 9, a child figure floats unattached and rootless in an indefinite and murky space punctuated by bubbles and fragments of enigmatic text; both elements add to the overall feeling of fragmentation and dislocation of the painting. The phrase being in a bubble suggests a sense of secure containment and removal, signifying a rare socioeconomic status. Conversely, a drop can also indicate an inflated valuation, a false and unstable valuation. Immigrant no. 9 mentions both allusions. A small house paired with the word NO floats in a bubble. The juxtaposition strikes a moving chord. The word YES flows in an indefinite color field of dark gray; it is a symbolic affirmation of the out of bubble exposure to the vagaries of life that most of us are familiar with. The child seems paralyzed by another bubble suspended just beyond his reach; huddled inside is a couple of vague figures – pictures of the child’s parents or ancestors?
Paradoxes galore
An American version of Esmaeilipour’s revealing money bag appears in Through Time. This version is stuck with dollar bills, not much to brag about. The text appearing in the painted frame disproves American abundance with the Think Again warning. It sounds like a warning about assumptions based on cultural and economic dominance. The austerity commentary echoes compositional objects equally laden with questionable cultural references: an empty hourglass, a vase adorned with plastic toy soldiers, a stack of bound magazines. Yet, the work’s overall narrative appears to conflict.
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