Mohammad Ehsaei is an acclaimed artist, calligrapher, designer, and educator, as well as one of the founding practitioners of naqqashi-khat (calligraphic painting), a 1960s approach to modernist painting that made innovative use of traditional Persian scripts. Ehsaei’s untitled 1974 work is one of his earliest calligraphic abstractions, created shortly after his graduation from Tehran University, where he served (while still a student) as one of the founders of the Graphic Design Department. Its bright palette and flat masses are unusual compared to later work, as is the degree to which it departs from traditional calligraphic forms. The rhythmic curves, repeated vertical strokes, and diamond-shaped dots strongly evoke Persian script, but they do not form readable words. Ehsaei has spoken of this inaccessibility as a critique of the historic abuses of language – the ways that writing so often serves the powerful, whether in legal documents or historiography. Illegibility is also an invitation to engage: “Viewers who speak the language might find a word they can read here or there, so they will keep looking for the rest, but they will never find it. That search is what I am after”.
This is the first time the work of Mohammad Ehsaei is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Media Farzin
