Newsha Tavakolian / from For The Sake of Calmness
For The Sake of Calmness
Newsha Tavakolian
Thomas Erben / Jan 9 – Feb 13, 2021
New York, USA

Thomas Erben Gallery is very excited to present Tehran based Newsha Tavakolian’s For the Sake of Calmness (19min, 2020). The film depicts a bifurcated state of mind, removed from the real world while being hyper sensitively affected by it. Usually, Tavakolian’s camera is directed towards other people’s struggles – the artist is a member of Magnum Photos since 2019 – but here she directs the lens inwardly, taking her recurring experience with PMS as a point of departure. Tavakolian’s inner monologue leads us through a labyrinthine set of scenes, each hauntingly speaking of painful stasis. Unable to express their emotions, the film’s protagonists instead transpire their interior tensions. With redemption seemingly out of reach, For The Sake of Calmness offers an apt metaphor mirroring our current uncertainties.

This is Tavakolian’s third solo presentation with the gallery which includes her 2013 exhibition Look as well as the presentation of Pages of an Iranian Photo Album at Art Basel Hong Kong (2016).

“In this film, I focus on the way the tediously repetitious transformation of my body – PMS – affects my perception. I speak of being immersed in the reality of one’s own life, and yet remaining painfully aware of what lies outside of it. But how does one visualize an amorphous idea, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for my visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with my monologue, adds a third dimension to my portrayal speaking of the contradiction of being unmoored from the real world and yet achingly affected by it.” –Newsha Tavakolian

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • 1 a 1 Affinità
    Nov 22, 2023 – Feb 29, 2024
    ON House Milano
    Milan, Italy

    1 a 1 Affinità is a group show celebrating the relationship between different artistic expressions and their surrounding context. The exhibition takes place at ON House Milano: a charming location in the heart of Milano, which used to be the Azucena workshop of Architect Caccia Dominioni.

    The combination of space, artwork, and the artworks between them invites the audience to discover, through research and observation, that “spark” of affinity generated by perception.

    The path follows the thin line that defines different artistic languages, such as figurative art and abstract art, but also performance, photography, NFT, happening, video and installation. And everything with the utmost respect to the historical heritage and design purpose of the house.

    This was, in fact, the toughest challenge for the curators Anna Kessler and Anna Niutta. They looked for the harmony within different poetics, and created a unique and unexpected domestic experience. An experience deeply related to the visible.

    Starting from the “Sleeping Girl” (yes, she will be actually sleeping in the bedroom of the house), the exhibition reveals a path through memories and people, mysteries and objects and colors and hopes. And in fact, isn’t the bed the one, true realm of imagery and imagination, dreams and visualizations?

    Every night, as we lay our day down, we practice the art of letting go. We leave our conscious thoughts, our rational mind behind, and we agree to see, and be seen  –  we accept to yield control. And as we do that, we gift ourselves to the domain of imagery  –  key and vehicle to those intimate, submerged places and spaces. At night, it is instinct and imagery that guide our experience.

    Research on the visible is a challenge to observation directed to the observer. There certainly is a real world that we know, but how much of this real world is exhausted in our sensory experience?

    Through the dialogue between works, the observer discovers similarities between different languages that ultimately prove to be distant only in appearance. Different artistic means manage to generate, through perception, a living impression in continuous dialogue with the observer.

    The common features, or affinities, between the different forms of expression appear very clear at times: the figurative often finds itself drawing from elements that are not properly its own, and the non-figurative struggles to disregard sensory reality that is also perhaps only an illusion.

    To what degree is our sensory perception conditioned by our inner state and to what extent is it – instead – influenced by our surroundings?

    The show will be featuring the following artists: Michele Dal Bosco, Louise Daniel, Giovanni De Benedetto, Laura Grinberga, Alessandro Grimoldieu, Rosanna Iob, Rebecca Loro, Guenda Nocentini, Carolina Pozzi, Maddalena Tesser, Maria Giovanna Zanella. With the precious contribution of Annalisa Iob. Everything was made possible by the vision of Fabio Tacchinardi.

    Curated by Anna & Anna
    On House Milano, Via Passione 8, Milan, Italy
    Vernissage by invitation only
    For more information: art@onhousemilano.com

  • James Barnor: Studio of Life
    Oct 27, 2023 – Mar 10, 2024
    FOMU
    Antwerp, Belgium

    James Barnor: Studio of Life offers an overview of James Barnor’s (b. Ghana, 1929) remarkable career. His multifaceted and powerful images made him a photography pioneer. This exhibition not only showcases Barnor’s rich and diverse body of work but also examines the cultural connections between Accra, London and Antwerp. In 1949, Barnor launched his photography studio Ever Young in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. It grew into a pivotal meeting place for young Ghanaians who longed for freedom from British colonial rule. (more…)