Still Life, Unthinkable Thought and Peak Damavand

Iranian artist Shahpour Pouyan’s works investigate the geometries of power, looking at the shapes in which it has manifested in history. Born in Iran in the year of the Islamic revolution, Pouyan childhood was dominated by the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war that also broke out in the same year. His father was a military engineer. It is no surprise then that his work has consistently engaged with the contours of conflict, using the arresting beauty of installations and drawings to draw viewers’ attentions to unsettling histories of warfare.

Still Life (2014), one of Pouyan’s exhibits, is a three-dimensional recreation in ceramic of a World War-I photograph of confiscated German shells. Apart from referring to the devastation caused by the war, the title alludes to the eerie resemblance the photographer’s aesthetic display of shells on a tabletop bears to arrangements used in still life paintings.

Unthinkable Thought (2014) is a survey of the architectures of power; drawn by Pouyan from various locations but united by their shapes and ideological functions. Included in this delicate installation are the domes of the pantheon in Rome and the unrealised Volkshalle (People’s Hall) designed for Adolf Hitler. Also recreated is a terracotta dome from medieval Egypt and elements from Iran’s architectural history such as the conical dome of Seljuk-era buildings and the onion-shaped dome of Isfahan’s Shah Masjid. The final edifice is the fictional ‘Dome of Iranistan’: An ornamented black dome that embodies Iran’s ambitions for power in the Middle East.

Peak Damavand (2014) depicts Damavand, Iran’s tallest mountain and an icon of national pride. The soaring peak has been drawn upside down, evoking the anatomy of nuclear explosions through which nation states across the world have sought to brandish their capacities for destruction.