TEHRAN – Four sculptural pieces of varying sizes and a sound installation by Iranian artist Ali Mirazimi are on view in an exhibition at the Liste Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland.

Red and white alongside reflective and transparent surfaces make up the pieces from Mirazimi’s ongoing series “Lipstick to the Void”, which deals with a specific period of time that we call “at the moment”.

The artworks have been sent to the fair by Tehran’s Dastan Basement Gallery.

The artist believes this temporality is constantly shaping contemporary geopolitics and is involved with another instant that he calls “the moment of impact.”

Mirazimi developed this concept by studying the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraqi electronic disruption technologies had rendered Iranian air raid warning systems ineffective and turned the radar surface into an opaque white. 

The red siren had gone off and the bombs had fallen. Beyond “the moment of impact” and beneath the white surface of the radar, “wrinkles appeared as topographic ruins under the red sirens and the spilled blood”. 

The artist creates a sound area and installation piece in which the form and space are close to this moment. 

The pieces also deal with various characteristics of sound, hearing receptors and listening processes and how to counteract or neutralize them with some form of transparency. 

Regarding to the concept of “the moment of impact” he tries to consider the present as a corridor of sound that cannot be imagined without audible experience.

36-year-old Mirazimi works in various media from installations to audio design and texts. 

He studies the structures of images in relation to politics, and contemporary art exhibition spaces from a cinematic point of view with respect to the modern history of Iran.

He participated in Ashkal Alwan’s HWP 2016-17 Program in Beirut and Shifting Panoramas, the Feldfunf, and Goethe Institute residency in Berlin. 

He also was a nominee for DAAD’s 2020 long-term research grant and was one of the three artists participating in the Iranian national pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. 

The in-person edition of the Liste Art Fair will run until June 19 and its virtual edition will continue until June 26.

Photo: No. 01 from Iranian artist Ali Mirazimi’s series “Lipstick to the Void”.

MMS/YAW