Bread and Flower (072)

Andersen’s is delighted to announce Farshad Farzankia’s first solo show at Amaliegade 40, entitled Bread and Flower, which presents a corpus of the artist’s new works, ranging from large colourful canvases to ready-mades and sculptures. In the same way that the title of a book can frame the stories it holds, the title of this exhibition Bread & Flower sets a narrative thread that binds the tales staged and recounted by the paintings and sculptures on view. Bread and flowers inspire the conceptual frame for the show: bread is the essential food man can eat to survive, providing the vital nourishment that characterises human nutrition. Whereas flowers are symbols of beauty in nature that nourish men’s souls, fulfilling our longing to be surrounded by aesthetically attractive elements. Bread and flowers are simple but essential sustenance for both the body and the mind. Exploring simple forms and colors, Farzanskia’s artistic research carries this crucial aspect and deals with what is vital in human life: childhood memories, cultural traditions and family. In his paintings, Farzankia stages scenes of daily life, inviting the viewer to experience them as a voyeur. Farshad Farzankia’s works include a vast collection of visual references, drawing on either personal or collective historical memories. Like a sketchbook, his paintings assemble a repertoire of images including individual and family portraits, birds and plants. The stylised shapes draw on the iconography of the Persian rugs, which used to hang in his Iranian home. Farzankia’s stratified practice is rendered in the canvas' calibrated composition through the use of colours and a proportioned distribution of forms, lines, figures and contours. His sculptures are essentially objects trouvés, assembled in composition either one on top of or close to each other. Painting boxes of different sizes, Farshad uses a heterogeneous palette of colours and arranges them in alternate compositions, creating a small crowd of people that populate the exhibition space. In his artistic research, sculptural forms are created by collecting boxes, mirrors, faux Japanese separé screens and by intervening with them, layers are added to the stratified identity of these readymades. Farzankia's work is dream-like and provides the viewer with access to a different dimension, where life, history and memories merge, creating a new imaginary we are invited to explore.