Curated by: Shirin Gharavisky

Artist Statement:
Build
Destruction
And between the rubble and the shadows
Find yourself
I have been for years
Between Earth and the Sun
I stand perfectly
So with this trick
I hug shadows and secrets
Mehrdad Jafari/December 2020

Press release:
Soo contemporary art gallery holds the individual exhibition of Mehrdad Jafari’s works under the title a recycling of shadows. 68 works from this artist in different sizes and in three categories of daily memories, lengthy sleep, and vague memories all of which are the subgroup of shades recycle are exhibited right now.
In these works and through a quest in sketch, painting and collage, he has reached a particular expressiveness which recounts the process of creation and destruction. Nowhere in the course of his creative production of artworks he accepts the beautiful as defined by dictated definitions and even after the complete destruction of the piece, he keeps working without a pause to reach newer findings.
The technical basis of Mehrdad Jafari’s works in a recycling of shadows mounts this very process of destruction, in a way that the artist wrecks its previous works and from the debris, recreates something new.
This destruction and renewal emulate Homayoun Katouzian articles gathered in the book Iran, the short term society, lack of social constancy leading to constant destruction and renewal.
In daily memories collection we meet cozy rather unoccupied drawings which are intimate and clean-cut, expressing the subject without a challenge. As we can make of the title, every piece is created on a daily-basis, forming this distinctive chronic in time.
The material used by the artist and the complexity of the images in the collection lengthy sleep exceed those in daily memories. Images with darker colors, with more pictorial rather more abstract elements.
In the end, the collection vague memories includes expressive collage-painting pieces and where through much endeavor and curiosity, the artist has juxtaposed his works to a hallucinating situation.
As Mehrdad Jafari claims in the a recycling of shadows statement, he finds himself and his works somewhere among building and destruction, therefore, decrypts the shades and secrets.

Daily memories series:

Lengthy sleep series:

Vague memories series:

Installation view: