Shaping Beauty

img.0Sohrab 5, 2014ink, acrylic, and paper with printed and handwritten farsi text from the poem ‘dar golestaneh’ (‘in the garden’) 12.5 x 18.75 in / 31.7 x 47.6 cm. Image courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery

For the 9th edition of Art Dubai — the leading international art fair in the middle east and south asia — New York-based Leila Heller Gallery presents the intricate paper works of iranian creative Hadieh Shafie. By marrying traditional persian manuscript culture with the modernist color field, shafie creates distinct visual poetics that speak to various social and political circumstances. Her low-relief paper sculptures are reminiscent of ancient middle eastern art, with hidden hand-written and printed farsi text painted within the folds of elaborate paper spirals.

At first glance, the works seem to be a burst of color, but from an angle, viewers can realize impossibly refined words inscribed onto tightly-packed scrolls, so adeptly applied that they become barely legible. For Art Dubai, Shafie has created several new works including ‘block’ and new diptych pieces, which juxtapose flat scrolls with stacked paper. In these two pieces, text is directly applied to the surface edges, deriving their form from an interplay between what is hidden and revealed.

img.1Detail of rolled paper for ‘sohrab 5′ Image © Designboom

img.2Detail of ‘sohrab 5′ Image © Designboom

img.3Forugh 7, 2014ink, acrylic, and paper with printed and handwritten farsi text from the poem ‘tavalodi digar’ (‘another birth’) 12.5 x 18.75 in / 31.7 x 47.6 cm. Image courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery

img.4Detail of ‘forugh 7′ Image © Designboom

img.5Fragments II, 2014 ink, acrylic and paper with printed and handwritten farsi text ‘eshgh’ (‘love/passion’) 12.5×18.75×3.5 inches/ 31.7×47.6×8.8cm Image © Hadieh Shafie

img.6Detail of ‘fragments II’ Image © Hadieh Shafie

img.7Stripe, 2014ink, acrylic and paper with printed and handwritten farsi text ‘eshgh’ (‘love/passion’)12.25 x 96 in / 31.1 x 243.8 cm. Image courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery

img.8  Detail of ‘stripe’ Image © Designboom

img.9Detail of ‘stripe’ Image © Designboom

img.10Detail of ‘stripe’ Image © Designboom

Via Designboom - Read the source