Solo-Exhibit

MALIHEH AFNAN
6. September – 9. November, 2014
Tonight, The Door Towards Words Will Be Opened
curated by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh

with Poetry by Sohrab Sepehri
and an installation by Eva Beierheimer and Miriam Laussegger

Galerie Kornfeld

Fasanenstraße 26
10719 Berlin

“Tonight / In a Strange Dream / The Door Towards Words / Will be Opened” [Sohrab Sepehri]

In cooperation with Rose Issa Projects, London.

The exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld shows about twenty new works by the artist. The works are accompanied by a light installation by the young Viennese artist Duo Eva Beierheimer & Miriam Laussegger with poetic fragments of the Persian poet Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) and a motto of Shams-e Tabrizi (1185-1248).

Artist(s)

Maliheh Afnan (* 1935) is a poet of line, of earthen colors and iconic signs. In her often small-sized works, the artist creates dreamlike scenes of a perfect language; delicate parchment palimpsests touching upon the unexposed. The artist creates an écriture automatique beyond legibility. She writes her paintings – right – or left-aligned- as contemporary pictorial quotes of an Antiquity that can no longer be found in any language. Her works are hieroglyphic ruins of ancient landscapes, faces of exile; a visual poetry in the tradition of Persian and Arabic calligraphy reflecting an immense, magical beauty which resists the withdrawal of this tradition.

Maliheh Afnan’s works evoke Paul Klee’s poetic miniature works of paper and are reminiscent of the work of Mark Tobey, with whom the artist felt closely related.

The works of Maliheh Afnans have been exhibited internationally and are represented in several international museums and collections, including The Metropolitan Museum in New York; The British Museum in London and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.

Maliheh Afnan was born to Iranian parents in Haifa. She lived in Beirut, Washington DC, Kuwait, and spent more than 23 years in Paris. The artist has been living and working in London since 1997.

Documentation

Publication

A publication, Maliheh Afnan: “Tonight, the Door Towards Words Will be Opened” is published with the exhibition. Contributors include Maliheh Afnan, Lutz Becker, Eva Beierheimer & Miriam Laussegger, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sohrab Sepehri, et al.

Press