An incandescent, powerfully orchestrated, vitalist and Dionysian work!

Discover the works of the young outsider Iranian artist of 34 years Mohammad Ariyaei in his 1st solo exhibition in France "Iranian Awakening Lodge" through a selection of 40 unpublished paintings in acrylic on paper and on canvas.

Mohammad Hossein Ariyaei was born in 1987 in Isfahan, Iran. He grew up with his grandmother who practiced Sufism and mysticism through the writing of prayers, dialogue with parallel worlds and exorcism. She tells him many stories that will populate her imagination and constitute the source of her inspiration. In 2013, he began painting on the advice of an illustrator of children's books. Self-taught, he never stopped painting. The “Iranian Awakening Lodge” exhibition is an ode to vital energy and the appetite for life. A testimony also of the culture of which the artist is the depositary through the women of his line; her great, great-grandmother was part of this lodge 100 years ago in Iran and she delivered her knowledge of Sufism and mysticism to her daughters, from generation to generation until today. He is thus the first man in the family to hold this knowledge and to reveal it in the background at the heart of his painting.

Mohammad Ariyaei's works are incandescent. At the heart of an uninhibited, humorous and crazy figuration, it is located at the crossroads of the East and the West. He mixes Persian poetry and literature as well as human beings and animals, and in person summons Persian philosophers and poets such as Saadi, Roudaki, Ferdowsi, Khaghani, Hafez and the mystic Shams to the same table, par- beyond time and space, as if to reconcile the spirit of creation and take support and advice from his illustrious predecessors. The surface of the work is punctuated, saturated with signs and bubbling with cross references between cultures and visual, poetic, literary and musical arts.

The vertical composition of some works is reminiscent of Japanese prints and in particular of the Japanese theater populated by funny, outraged and tragic characters. Mohammad Ariyaei delivers us a thunderous art, frenetic as much in the graphics mixing text and image as in the energetic color, intense, fresh and luminous. Indeed, the emotion arises from the pure color, singing through reds, blues, yellows and oranges applied with freedom and casualness. The freedom of the gesture is perceived in the supple, slender features and the crazy hair of the characters. Arabic writings fly from all sides and participate in the overall graphic composition. Mohammad Ariyaei's work is a living score composed of a farandole of exuberant colors, skilfully orchestrated shapes and signs. The work is organically alive, noisy, as if illuminated from within by color.

This extroverted art presents a powerfully controlled chaos, on the verge of explosion, just like its creator, a being at the same time jovial, lucid and serious with regard to the history of his country. Like a cry of survival, he depicts the tragedies of human history, its questions, 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 human injustice.