“What you see is a vacant space left by a rider who has crossed the desert!”

Bahman Mohasses – Iranian Contemporary Artist (1931-2010)

The main technique I have used to create this series of work is Mezotint. Mezzotint is a labor-intensive printmaking process which begins with the inky blackness of a fully textured or “rocked” copper plate, and by burnishing and scraping the plate I create smooth places where the ink does not stick. Using the same plate, Mezzotint allows for the reduction of tones to make new images and forms while the plate is inevitably erased by its own process; as a metaphor for life of an artist who leaves part of his existence into the works that outlive him.

As the main theme of these works is “life and its undeniable result: Death,” this reductive process is a good reflection of the way that I consider the most inevitable happening in the Human being’s life. Rauschenberg’s “Erased De Kooning Drawing” had a major impact on forming this process. To take this concept further, I have destroyed some of the physical prints by scratching, burning, pouring some concealing material and using other impromptu ways to further destroy them, as I believe not every artist is lucky enough to have all of his artworks preserved.

Mehdi Darvishi was born in the summer of 1988, coinciding with the Iran – Iraq peace resolution. In his war-stricken hometown, Mehdi grew up unexposed to art galleries and museums. In 2007 he left home to earn a BFA in Painting at the University of Tehran where he learned basic printmaking techniques such as relief and intaglio. After receiving his degree in 2011, his interest in printmaking grew into a life’s pursuit. He has since exhibited in over 30 countries and has participated in more than two hundred global exhibitions, competitions, residencies, and as a visiting artist. His works have been widely collected by museums such as the China Printmaking Museum, the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art, Jyvaskyla Museum of Fine Arts, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the US Library of Congress. He is the recipient of the Southern Graphics Conference Fellowship as well as the Pritzker fellowship from the Arts Institute of Chicago. He is also a finalist for the prestigious award “Mario Avati” that takes place in the fall of 2023 at the Academie Des Beaux-Artes in Paris.