Lot 45: PARVIZ TANAVOLI (IRAN, BORN 1937) Red Heech fiberglass signed Parviz a

PARVIZ TANAVOLI (IRAN, BORN 1937) Red Heech fiberglass signed Parviz and dated 06 (lower right), number 10 from an edition of 25, executed in 2006 height: 90cm

Provenance: Property from a private collection, England Parviz Tanavoli maintains that heech (the Persian word for nothingness) is a subject which has served not only as the lifeblood of his work, but has been a figure upon which, in his own words, he has bestowed his heart. Tanavoli’s depiction of the heech is enigmatic both in form and conception; belying the nothingness of its namesake, it has a rich persona brimming with meaning, galvanizing in the material a spiritual concept which has occupied Persian mysticism for centuries. Whilst the idea of nothingness in the Persian mystical lexicon equates to the spiritual achievement of extinguishing notions of self-hood and attachment, for Tanavoli, the idea of heech has a far more familiar occurrence and is not confined to the spiritual realm. For Tanavoli, the notion of heech is not the privilege of a mystical enclave, Tanavoli’s nothingness permeates everything, it is an animating and creative force; it is the nothingness that precedes creation, the nothingness out of which we are born, from which ideas come to life and out of which bonds are formed. The shared plight borne by the brute inevitability of nothingness, for Tanavoli, has a binding quality, and through this, his heech takes a life like form. With its elegant curvilinear shape and hollow eyes, the heech is anthropomorphized, gazing playfully at its viewer. Its stretched contours and colourful exterior give the heech an almost playful aura, one which reminds us that even the most profound poets and philosophers of the Persian mystical pantheon, saw revelry and mischief as one of the key palliatives to the burden of existence In my mind, it was not life that amounted to nothing, but rather nothing which brimmed with life itself – Parviz Tanavoli Every door bears a shape different to the other doors. My aim is to direct and draw the attention to the possibility of benefitting from our artistic heritage while giving it a new shape. The modulation of sculpted lines in my figures, has been one of the focal points of my work for many years; what drew me in particular to the configuration of these forms is the dual appearance of both conflict and interplay between them. The union and fusion of sculpted figures is an integral part of my work and presents us with a constantly changeable relationship between form and meaning Mohammad Ghani Hikmat