SLEEPY an Installation by Farid Jaffari Samarghandi opens tomorrow at Azad Art gallery, Jaffari (Tehran/1980) has shown his videos works extensively in Tehran in number of Solo shows as well as abroad, originally studied fine art at Soureh University,Tehran, with focus of painting, started experimenting with video around 1998-1999. and beside his own practice has been generously contributing to the new wave of video art in Iran, collaborating with numerous artists on their video works…

This time he takes us to a journey of another kind by his multimedia installation, this is how Hamed Sahihi describes it:

Sleeping is a significant part of our life without a doubt, and there is no wonder that it has an outlined presence in a large number of Art history pages specially the ones which refer to the beginning of the 20th century. It’s an experience much closer to temporary death, other than living, making almost one/third of life disappear in an unknown, dark and speechless tunnel. Some often recall the time we spend asleep, with such murky words; also a number of artists who have been inspired and worked on “sleeping” as their theme, did the same.

Sleeping is such a mysterious journey; it rarely happens that an artist bases his works on such a topic, taking the act of sleeping as a ordinary human activity. And here is where exactly Farid Jafari Samarghandi’s “Sleepy” series differs from the rest, as he changes his point of view from someone who is sleeping, to an observer which looks at his sleeping subjects – mainly chosen from the members of his family and close friends – capturing intimate moments in an unusual place and time: having a short nap on a sofa or resting in the afternoon with just a pillow lying on the living room’s carpet. This often appears as a station between two states of being awake, in a way it resembles (sleeping as ) a natural and necessary phenomenon rather than a melancholic-schizophrenic trip. Dealing the subject in a parallel experience of pleasure and anxiety, peeping someone sleeping can be threatening and scary from the sleeping person’s point of view and in the other hand watching a living person with its gentle movements might make the observer unable to track its liveliness and terrified his/her sleeping fellow might be dead. Therefore the clever choice of the medium – photography and video – makes the journey more attractive – photographs of standstill subjects beside moving images in the course of time.

Hamed Sahihi
Translated into English by Amirali Ghasemi

Opening: Friday 22nd of Oct,2009. 4-8 pm
23rd-28th Oct, 2009 , Visting Hours Saturday to Wednesday, 4-8 pm

Azad Art Gallery
No 5, Salmas Square, Golha Square, Tehran
Tel: + 9821 88008676