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FRIEZE LA 2023
Peybak & Mamali Shafahi -
At Frieze LA 2023, Dastan presents a duo presentation of artworks by Mamali Shafahi and Peybak that includes paintings, three-dimensional relief and a center-piece sculpture that seek to create a sensory experience for the viewer. The experience aims to take the viewer into a temple-like setting and display visual input that aims to synesthetically induce haptic, somatosensory and auditory reactions. This is Dastan's second display at the prominent art fair in Los Angeles.The booth at Frieze LA displays an experience that seeks to present alternative interpretations of the ‘exotic’ and the ‘barren’ in the works of Mamali Shafahi and Peybak. Works of Shafahi touch on some archaic cords. They bear the distinct mark of an era in human culture when fear had a substantial external counterpart, though they may hint at hidden chimeras, and include ambiguously playful elements, or at least hints at childhood dreams.
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Barren landscapes of Peybak are populated by creatures at once: familiar and repulsive, smooth-bodied and emaciated, angelic and fiendish, cuddly and loathsome, amphibian and terrestrial, this- and other-worldly… and the list of opposites can go on. To some, these landscapes may appear as large question marks. Some of fade into the horizon and some twist to converge into a void, a singularity perhaps representing either infinity or nothingness, leaving the viewer pondering on their very being, even as illusory creatures.
Contrary to the gorillas of Shafahi, there is nothing exotic about the fauna of Peybak. Perhaps what the work of (Shafahi and Peybak) both exude is a sense of imminent doom (there is no flora whatsoever in the work of Peybak); if so, they do so in totally dissimilar ways (flora teems in Shafahi’s work). Peybak’s larger canvases play with the viewer’s sense of magnification (landscapes appear unbound), both in terms of how scale is perceived and how sociopolitical references to present day events within the country are recorded, put into memory, or even metaphorized. Smaller works draw attention to a particular scene sentineled by a creature on the frame. These also draw attention to the precision that has gone into drawing the details of larger works – each micro-fauna is in fact a fully formed character and further investigation may reveal intimate commonalities with our everyday, shifting personas. Could it be that these creatures are all one organism in its infinite manifestations?
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Peybak
Abrakan 17, 2022Tea, acrylic on cardboard in artist's frame (wood and acrylic)
29.5 x 46.5 x 5.5 cm
11 1/2 x 18 1/2 x 2 in -
Portrait of the Artist
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Installation Views
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Portrait of Mamali Shafahi by Florian Hetz
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Installation Views
![Installation view of Abrakan [Naissance] exhibition at Dastan's Basement](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_2400,h_2400,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-artlogicwebsite0271/usr/library/images/main/feature_panels/763/peybak-abrakan-naissance-basement-highres-01-so7a9821-.jpg)
![Installation view of Abrakan [Naissance] exhibition at Dastan's Basement](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_2400,h_2400,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-artlogicwebsite0271/usr/library/images/main/feature_panels/763/peybak-abrakan-naissance-basement-highres-08-untitled_panorama2-.jpg)
