Fenice ante fata resurgo

Primo Marella Gallery Lugano is pleased to present “Fenice ante fata resurgo”, the new solo exhibition by Arvin Golrokh.

Fenice, Ante Fata Resurgo, aims to explore the symbolism of the phoenix, between darkness and hope. The featured works depict an apocalyptic landscape shrouded in darkness, in which oppression and hardship seem to extinguish any glimmer of light. And yet, from this bleak scenario emerges the instinct of human survival, like an open wound in the heart of darkness. Just as the phoenix rises from its ashes, these paintings embody the possibility of rebirth — a rebirth that germinates from the very abyss of despair. The current state of disrepair, the hallmark of our time, is made visible in these works and invites the spectator to a critical awareness. This process becomes a plea to recognize the deceptions and justifications of contemporary society. It is a reflection that transcends the aesthetic dimension and reaches a deeper philosophical level. These paintings are not a call to hope, but an invitation to face the reality of the disrepair and contradictions of society. The destruction and burnt images in this exhibition do not offer solutions, but rather raise open-ended questions as we await a rebirth that must be found in a critical examination of reality. This process of awareness is left to the subjectivity of the spectator, who is called to form his own judgements and to determine his own way of responding to present-day challenges.

Demetrio Paparoni writes in the incipit of his essay "L'abbraccio di Arvin Golrokh":

"The legend of the phoenix, reborn after having been transformed from purifying ashes, is one of ancient origins. Its symbolism has traveled from one culture to another, adapting to the sensibilities of each. The title Arvin Golrokh has chosen for this exhibition, Ante Fata Resurgo, is a variation of the phoenix’s motto, “post fata resurgo,” an expression in Latin that summons the concept of rebirth as it expresses faith in the ability to rise up and overcome adversities in life. Reflecting on the fact that rebirth implies death, and thus entails defeat, Golrokh changed the phoenix’s motto to “ante fata resurgo,” which expresses the idea of a more radical opposition to the course of events, to what would seem a destiny already written.

It is the ability to resist and overcome to which the paintings of this exhibition allude; paintings that at first glance appear somber and disheartening; paintings that upon closer observation, cause us to feel the darkness surrounding the subjects subside, making way for glimmers of light".

© Demetrio Paparoni

The legend of the phoenix, reborn after having been transformed from purifying ashes, is one of ancient origins. Its symbolism has traveled from one culture to another, adapting to the sensibilities of each. The title Arvin Golrokh has chosen for this exhibition, Ante Fata Resurgo, is a variation of the phoenix’s motto, “post fata resurgo,” an expression in Latin that summons the concept of rebirth as it expresses faith in the ability to rise up and overcome adversities in life. Reflecting on the fact that rebirth implies death, and thus entails defeat, Golrokh changed the phoenix’s motto to “ante fata resurgo,” which expresses the idea of a more radical opposition to the course of events, to what would seem a destiny already written.

Golrokh paints instinctively and uses bold colors. His art is symbolic and narrative, with political and existential implications. He tends to display reality not as it appears but as he perceives it within the depths of his being. His subjects are human figures, political and religious authorities, animals, landscapes, cities, factories, processions, parades and exoduses steeped in suffering. His color palette is dominated by alizarin red, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, veronese green (used primarily for glazing) and, above all, black. Lots of black, “like in the paintings of El Greco,” the artist notes. When it doesn’t cover the majority of the painting’s surface, ivory black is used to define the contours of the figures. Smoky black, with a touch of red, is used to contaminate the colors and accentuate the creases of the surface as well as the contrasts.

The image is never clear—even when there is light, it is still tragic, tormented, disenchanted, crude, and sometimes cruel towards the depicted subjects, whose nature and identity prove at times explicit, and others cryptic. Charged with references to history and geopolitics, his paintings test our knowledge of the world and suggest that an awareness of the role played by political and religious powers is the first necessary step towards acknowledging our condition and initiating strategies of resistance. Hence the expressionist roots of these works, which have little to do with historical expressionism from the first half of the twentieth century, despite their echo of the pasty brushstrokes of Chaim Soutine and Oskar Kokoschka whose compositions are imbued with dramatic atmospheres, somber tones and distorted images that seem to be swallowed by the mixture of paint.

The painting that initiates the Ante Fata Resurgo series features a phoenix in flames in a dark setting. Unlike other works from this cycle, here the subject occupies nearly the entire surface of the painting. The backdrop bears no signs of a city, nature or people. We are in the presence of an absolute place, one that blends together many places in which the destructive act of power is matched with the reaction of those who refuse to endure the tyranny. Golrokh’s phoenix does not rebel against man’s finitude, but instead against his injustices and the nonsensical limitations of freedom.

The figure of the phoenix in flames returns in a smaller work, with the same title, to which the artist has assigned the number 12. In this case, the mythological bird is presented with a yellow body that has not yet been entirely damaged by flames. While the numbered titles suggest a sequential order, Golrokh worked on the paintings in this exhibition simultaneously, using what he learned from each work to obtain an overall better formal and color solution for the others. Thanks to this method, each painting contributes to creating a unified narrative within which Golrokh enacts a form of resistance with multiple meanings—psychological, political and existential—that describes the experience of human beings who refuse to give up despite the hardships they may be enduring.

Adding to the dramatization of the narrative is Golrokh’s use of wooden planks from old windows as frames. Blackened, partially burnt, unfinished, irregular, chipped, and in some cases still including rusty hinges and hardware, these frames conjure up the wreckages from which they hail. An integral part of the work, their nature is expressed straightaway as they reflect the intensity of the disaster involving a community.

In addressing the relationship with the other, Golrokh gives importance to the role of family ties in the life of an individual. At the same time, he extends the concept of family to anyone who shares ideals and provides moral and material support. This concept is at the heart of a group of seven paintings (Fenice 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 11) featured in this exhibition, all set against a black background, in which human silhouettes embrace, touch and hold each other close, as if to protect one another. The light that strikes them, filling certain parts of the body with white, does not define the features of the figures, but rather makes them evanescent, somewhere between real and imaginary. We do not know if they are a family, two lovers, a mother kissing a child or a father kissing a child. We do not know if their proximity is real or merely desired. We feel the deep need for unity, which is jeopardized by the darkness that surrounds the scene, and we realize that this, too, is the representation of a form of resistance and opposition to a certain destiny. What emerges is an ancient iconography related to the theme of the embrace—a theme that has never lacked from the history of art. In an interplay of overlaps, these works recall classical themes such as the return of the prodigal son and the Holy Family. In Fenice 6, we sense the allusion to Edvard Munch’s Kiss (1897), as well as René Magritte’s Lovers (1928).

Golrokh is well aware of how ambiguous an image can be, of how a slight linguistic slippage has the potential to subvert its meaning or elicit different interpretations. This awareness comes from his examination of images of political propaganda. Totalitarian systems, whatever their origin, have always utilized reassuring and idyllic images of society to demonstrate that their government offers the best of all possible worlds. Nazi Germany, for example, supported artists who used their works to convey the model Aryan family, in which gender roles were rigorously defined. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Adolf Wissel depicted a family of peasants from Kalenberg gathered around a table, in which the figures are arranged in a hierarchical scale, with the man occupying the highest position. Sitting beside him is his son and, on the same side of the table, the grandmother, a hard-working woman who raises her gaze from her knitting. One of the daughters, in the lower corner of the scene, is intently drawing while the youngest daughter sits in her mother’s lap. The woman figure is the caregiver who provides numerous children to the fatherland. The youngsters are blond and rosy-cheeked—the healthy progeny of a great nation.

Praised and purchased by Hitler, the painting became a propagandistic work and was widely reproduced and circulated. In his other paintings of families and friends living in the German countryside, Wissel followed the same formal scheme, as did Ivo Salinger in his representations of the German peasant family or groups of people in taverns from the same years.

During that same period in Germany, art also provided other views of society. Holding a prominent place among those who dealt with the theme of the embrace is Käthe Kollwitz, an anti-militarist artist who lost her son in the First World War and grandson in the Second World War. Kollwitz depicts an embrace in which one human envelops the other with all her body and strength, as if to prevent her loved one from being stripped away. The bold black line that gives shape to the figures personifies the desperation of a broken bond and the pain of grief.

Golrokh first saw Kollwitz’s work in 2008, when he was a sixteen-year-old art student, at the exhibition Five Weeks with Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. He has been interested in the German artist ever since and has referred to her drawings and motifs in his paintings with black backgrounds centered on the theme of the embrace. A comparison between these paintings and the etching entitled Frau mit totem kind (Woman with Dead Child, 1903) reveals Golrokh’s interest in Kollwitz, an artist who remained faithful to her artistic vision and who was long banned from exhibiting in Germany, despite her name not ranking among the so-called “degenerate artists.”

As mentioned, Kollwitz’s contributions were also anti-militarist. The theme of devastation is not foreign to Golrokh: in Fenice 9 and the four paintings entitled Nekropolis he depicts territories engulfed in flames. These images, which are always ambiguous and never perfectly recognizable, challenge us to question their nature. Perhaps a large fire has destroyed a forest, a city or an industrial area. Or maybe a giant stream of glowing lava is passing through these territories and, while destroying them, is sowing what will soon make them fertile. In Fenice 9 a white shapeless mass calls to mind a dove fleeing from the flames. Upon closer examination, the bird has no head and a white cloth to his left is gently pushed by the wind. “For me, that white drape is an ethereal presence, it could be a sign of salvation, a guide toward the light,” the artist explained. “When I painted it, I had El Greco’s Veil of Veronica in mind,” he added.

The last Fenice (though not chronologically) is that to which the artist has assigned the number 10. In this case, the surface of the painting is almost entirely occupied by a female figure whose head is covered by a hijab, the veil worn by Muslim women as a sign of respect for the precepts of the Quran, which in some places is also imposed and controlled by the morality police.

The custom of women covering their heads, shared by monotheistic religions from the Bible, assumes different meanings in various faiths. In Jewish orthodoxy, married women cover their heads because hair is considered an object of sexual attraction. In Christianity, women who cover their heads do so particularly in Church, as an expression of humility before God. In both Judaism and Christianity, this tradition has progressively diminished over time, and it does not have political implications, as it does in post-revolutionary Iran after 1979. In Islamic culture, when it is not used by obligation, in addition to expressing respect for a religious authority, the veil maintains its symbolic meaning of modesty and reserve on behalf of the wearer. Even in Renaissance painting, the head veil suggests modesty and reserve. Antonello da Messina’s virgins, Giovanni Bellini’s Madonnas and Girolamo di Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene are just a few of numerous examples. And yet, for his painting, Golrokh looks not so much to the history of art as he does to the use of symbols in political propaganda.

In Fenice 10, a woman’s face, which is partially covered by a skeletal hand, is a black mass with no distinctive features. Contributing to the somber and dramatic character of the scene are the brushstrokes charged with color and fragments of dried oil paint transferred from the palette to the canvas and frame. This gives the painting the tactile dimension of a high relief and, at the same time, alludes to a reality in decay, as emphasized by the incomplete state of the frame, which bears the mark of usage and of the flames that corroded it; the missing parts showcase the violent impact that cracked the wood at the top and in the lower left-hand corner.

Bringing the series to completion are Piazzale Loreto, Keoeddon and Fenice 7, paintings whose vivid colors stand in stark contrast to the apocalyptic vision of the phoenix in flames, burning cities and agonizing embraces. In addition to the bright color palette, the pictorial style of these paintings is emphasized by the absence of frames.

In Piazzale Loreto, a figure wearing a turban appears grandiose at first glance, like when we look at a statue from below. His body, which is missing its legs, is supported by a black stick and resembles an empty suit on a coat hanger. Another tragic hero is featured in Keoddon, set among lush vegetation. The faces of these two figures are deformed and unrecognizable. Yet, due to their clothing, both convey symbols of power. They are political and religious commanders, charismatic leaders who can manipulate reality. They are figures who can spread despair around the world. Keoeddon brings an echo of Francis Bacon, in particular, Figure in a Landscape (1945), Figure Study 1 (1945-46) and the studies for his portrait of Van Gogh from 1957. Equally reminiscent of Bacon’s painting is the deformation of the man’s face, which makes the subject almost unrecognizable. The other frameless painting, Fenice 7, depicts two bearded religious men in turbans flanking a blooming green plant with red fruit. Behind them, a run-down building and some people can be spotted in the darkness. One of the men’s turbans has flown away. “I think it was the wind’s fault, but I don’t know,” Golrokh tells me.

Fenice ante fata resurgo: Arvin golrokh

Arvin Golrokh’s Embrace

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