MARJAN HABIBIAN / WALTER KRATNER / TEHERAN

DAYDREAMS 2

MARJAN HABIBIAN WALTER KRATNER

drawing | installation | photography

AZAD ART GALLERY TEHERAN

MARJAN HABIBIAN

“DRAWING”

MARJAN HABIBIAN BIOGRAPHY:

Marjan Habibian was born in Tehran, Iran in 1970. She loved and was effected by her children books, the nature around and the animals she took care of. Her artistic process started walking in the nature with her father and brother and later brought her to join mountaineering groups. Some family members writing poems, doing drawings, making theatre and films for sure encouraged and inspired her artistic side.

Then the Islamic revolution happened, followed by eight years of war! Despite this upheaval in life Marjan started to copy paintings from famous artists. When she finished graphic design high school with a diploma she started her own business in graphic design. In 1992 she attended Azad University of Fine Arts and Architecture in Tehran and received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting.

Her experience developed from using abstract expressionism to include figurative elements in her works.

Marjanparticipated in more than 30 exhibitions in Iran, Austria and Oman, 6 of them being personal. She has won several awards, including one at the Windsor & Newton Worldwide Millennium Painting Competition in 2000.

Her professional live constitutes of several years of working in animation at Iran TV, teaching art at university and school and keeping workshops in Oman and Austria.

Several articles about her and her works can be found in Iranian, Omani and Austrian newspapers. 2011 she

was interviewed by the satellite channel PDF TV Germany. For Marjan Habian, art is an expression of feelings.

“Through my paintings, I try to express my personal highs and lows and also those of the society I am living in. These reflect, to some extent, the development of art in Iran and rest of the world.”

ABOUT HER WORK: „Presenting selected images of my life experience in Iran, Oman and Austria. I am trying to show the influence of three different cultures in my works. Some of them reflect identities of the people around me, others show symbols of daily life in those cultures. My images are in drawing, painting and monotype. I will continue with the same materials.“

I FORGOT EVERYTHING, 2011 Mixed Media ca. 35 / 49 cm

UNTITLED, 2009

Pen and ink on print ca. 35 / 49 cm

WALTER KRATNER

“HOFFMANN” HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS (OVERPAINTED) “CLEAN HANDS” INSTALLATION

WALTER KRATNER BIOGRAPHY: Walter Kratner was born in 1954 in Graz (Austria). He recieved his education from the University of Florence (Design and History of Art). His site specific installation works include in Austria the Church of Tabor and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. He recieved a 2002 Carl Djerassi-Artists-In Residence Program Award. He exhibited his work at the Exploratorium, The Refusalon Gallery, the Projects Room in San Francisco and in different places in Europe. His revisited photographs used to transform and reconstruct memory and history. Recently the artist reflects on the situation for refugees in Europe and in the Middle East.

Complete resume: https://issuu.com/pfingstart/docs/werkbuch_korr_web

ABOUT THE WORK: “HOFFMANN” (works on paper on canavas) Complete resume: https://issuu.com/pfingstart/docs/walter_kratner_minoriten_2005 “CLEAN HANDS” (site specific installation)

Both group of works are about „The Order / Gestures / Distant Nearness”.

The serie of works on paper („hoffmann“, 2016) are based on photographs taken by Heinrich Hoffmann in 1927. The historical Photographs reveal how Adolf Hit-

HOFF 1839A, 2016 Mixed Media ca. 25 / 30 cm

ler rehearsed poses and hand gestures for his public speeches. He asked Hoffmann to take these shots so he could see what he would look like to his audience, then used them to help shape his performances, which he was constantly refining. Hitler asked that the photographs be destroyed, a request which Hoffmann did not honor.

Walter Kratner overpainted these historical photographs. Overpainted with dark brown and black colors the photographs gathers this body of work, which unites the labor of the hand with the work of mechanical reproduction to produce a kind of art, neutralizing the unbearable intention of the medium to reach an indifference to their potency. Walter Kratner painted directly onto small-format photographic prints. What emerges are strange hybrid works, without contrasts.

The most noticeable effect is that the dark colored swaths of charcoal and soot conceal parts of the underlying photograph, leading the viewer to struggle to fill in the pieces of the figurative story, creating a sense of mystery or unknown. Walter Kratners dark variations of the outcomes are speaking about disappearing of individual and collective memory in Europe.

(What is not visible will be forgotten.)

But in a certain way the works on paper of “hoffmann“ give the spectators the possibility to reflect about contemporary poses or the fashion styling of contemporary politicians in the television and other mass medias.

In the show in Teheran, Walter Kratner juxtapose to

HOFF 1863, 2016 Mixed Media ca. 25 / 30 cm

the work “hoffmann“, which is showing on the wall of the gallery, an installation-field on the floor. The work “clean hands” (2016), a field of about 100 pink gloves collocated between the columns in the exhibition space to fill the centre of the gallery, forms a kind of prelude to a body of works with overpainted dark photos.

Walter Kratners work extends the possibilities beyond traditional materials and methods of art. He juxtaposes the tranquil and ironic character of pink gloves with the complex reality of his work “hoffmann” no longer describable by means of simple explanatory models.

WALTER KRATNER / PHOTOS: „Hoffmann“, 2016 (All: Varnish on charcoal and seed and brown pastel colors on photo-print on canovas / dim: ca. 30 x 40 cm / 2016) “Clean hands”, 2016 (Site specific installation, ca. 100 pink gloves)

CLEAN HANDS, 2016

Site specific installation, ca. 100 pink gloves

For contacts and further informations click these links:

AZAD ART GALLERY

No.5, Salmas Sq, Golha Sq, Fatemi Sq, T: + (98 21) 88 00 86 76 F: + (98 21) 88 02 71 81 www.azadartgallery.com info@azadartgallery.com

MARJAN HABIBIAN

http://www.kultur.steiermark.at/cms/beitrag/12543981/25711273

WALTER KRATNER

CATALOGUE: https://issuu.com/pfingstart/ docs/werkbuch_korr_web VIDEO: https: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=AEyZ5GARTVs&feature= iv&src_vid=9dTuA9c_Y3k&annotation_ id=video%3A447b04f6-fc43-4b76-96df-facce4765307 BOOKLET: https://issuu.com/home/statistics/publications/lampedusa_booklet_1a_ version_1779013f547988