Mehdi Ghadyanloo – "a Magritte of our times"

Date
9 March 2015

Merging the style of the early 20th Century surrealists with contemporary street art, Tehran-based artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s work is strange and beguiling. He’s currently in London, busying himself with the mammoth task of creating murals all around the capital, including one measuring a whopping 3.4km. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also showing at the Howard Griffin Gallery in London, in an exhibition entitled Perception.

While the street art stuff is superbly rendered and so clever in its trompe l’oeils, for us the work really shines on canvas. The pieces are quiet, still, and mesmerising. “It is so clean and utopian/dystopian,” says gallery founder Richard Howard-Griffin. “There is a very discernible Soviet aesthetic to his work. Soviet art very much influenced Mehdi’s generation who grew up during the Iranian Revolution.”

The London show presents the work in a whole-gallery installation that sees the space clad in canvas and painted grey, with an “infinity square” at the back of the room and a resin tunnel at the front. Constantly toying with the viewers’ senses and making familiar subjects seem new and weird, Richard has declared Mehdi “a Magritte for our times.”

Perception is at the Howard Griffin Gallery in Shoreditch, east London until 2 April.

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Anticipation of Sin

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Black Mirror

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Diagram of Anticipation

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Ceremony of Distress

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Imitation of Respect

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Car Guaranty Co

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Mehdi Ghadyanloo: Logic of Metaphysics

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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