Although the artist is young he is not a 'discovery' as such.
His talent brought him to exhibit for around 50 solo and group exhibitions in Iran, USA,
London and China and got him not less than 6 awards.
Though Shahriar Ahmedi's palette is radiant, multicolour, and applied on monochromes
backgrounds; he explores emotional and psychological areas inspired by the poems of the
thirteenth century great mystic poet, Rumi.
The title "Rumi in my Chalice" refers to Rumi's love and philosophical poems and the Chalice
refers to the painter's canvas. Suggesting both anxiety and playful abandon, the huge
paintings are restless exploration of abstract pictorial possibilities.
The relationship between the lines, scripts and shapes are almost always in equilibrium
so that the scripts reinforce a sense of dialogue with the poems of Rumi, the turbulent
colour blocks seem to express the young painter's questioning and the lines and general
compositions challenge at abstraction imagery in Iran today.
The fifteen paintings in the exhibition are executed with consummate assurance and a fluid
hand. A virtuoso, Shahriar Ahmedi has developed a characteristic harmony of shape and
dazzling intensities of colour. The sense of energy they project is already gaining popularity
in Tehran and amongst prestigious supporters of the arts.
Born in 1979 in Iran, Ahmedi belongs to this young generation of painters announcing
new variations on continuing themes, revisiting his country's great cultural past, the
confrontation with contemporary Iran and the seek to find his true self. A common trait to
many great artists!
Like Rumi's poems, Ahmedi's paintings reveal more layers of colours, angles and meaning
every time we reread or relook at them.