Mohammad Hossein Ariyaei

Mohammad Hossein Ariyaei was born in 1987 in Isfahan, Iran. 

As a child, he grew up with his grandmother, who practiced exorcism and told him many stories that populated his imagination.

In 2013, he started to paint on the advice of a children's book illustrator. Self-taught, he has never stopped painting.

Mohammad Ariyaei's works are incandescent. At the heart of an uninhibited, humorous and open-minded figuration, he is at the crossroads of the East, Africa and the West. He mixes Persian poetry and literature, as well as human beings and animals, and personally invites Persian philosophers and poets such as Saadi and Hafez to the same table, beyond time and space, as if to reconcile the spirit of creation and take support and advice from these illustrious predecessors. 

The surface of the work is rhythmic, saturated with signs and bubbling with cross-references between cultures and the visual, poetic, literary and musical arts. The vertical composition of some of the works is reminiscent of Japanese prints, and in particular of Japanese theatre, populated by funny, outrageous and tragic characters. Mohammad Ariyaei's art is thunderous and frenetic, both in the graphics, which combine text and image, and in the energetic, intense, fresh and luminous colours. Indeed, emotion is born from pure, singing colour through the reds, blues, yellows and oranges applied with freedom and casualness. The freedom of the gesture can be seen in the supple, untied features and the wild hair of the characters. The Arabic writing flies everywhere and contributes to the overall graphic composition. Mohammad Ariyaei's work is a living score composed of a farandole of exuberant colours, forms and signs skilfully orchestrated. The work is organically alive, noisy, as if lit from within by colour.

This extrovert art presents a powerfully controlled chaos, on the verge of explosion, just like its creator, a being who is at once jovial, lucid and serious with regard to the history of his country. Like a cry for survival, it depicts the dramas of human history, its questioning, its wanderings, its absurdity and its powerlessness as an observer of his contemporaries. This scathing observation is nevertheless tinged with laughter and lightness to better invite the viewer to rethink the world and take a distanced look at love, desire, betrayal, war and the injustice of men.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2021 : "Iranian Awakening Lodge" Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris

2020 : "Deer and Flame", Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2018 : "I put a spell on you", Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, Iran

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

2021 : "Sinnflut/Senseflood", Goldwerk Gallery, Rostock, Germany

2019: "Untamed", Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2018: "Out Sider artist", Art Lab Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon

2016: Sixth Annual Outsider art exhibition, Dastan Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2016: "Watching and Caring", XVA Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

2016: "Outsider art", Haan Gallery, Shiraz, Iran

2015: "Wild garden", Hemmer Gallery, Netherlands

2015 : Fourth annual Outsider art exhibition, Laleh Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2014: Third annual Outsider art exibition, Laleh Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2013: "Cherry tree diversity in the outskirt", Laleh Gallery, Tehran, Iran

2012: "Outsider artists", Laleh Gallery, Tehran, Iran