Pejman Ebadi: Tales from the Other Side

‘For me, creating comes closer to something that I would describe as a shamanistic voyage… its language belongs to another world, rather, to the other world; the world of the unknown and the unseen- that which the visible is merely a mirror of.’ Pejman Ebadi

This spring, Hay Hill Gallery presents the weird and wonderful world of Iranian born artist Pejman Ebadi. Spanning over two decades, the artist’s wildly diverse style encompasses scrawling angry creatures, sun-striped horizons, withered swastikas and voodoo symbols. The gods and goddesses of mythology battle out their wars on canvas; their bad tempered dragons and slack-jawed totems menace the bright Aztec colours.

Nose-less figures with elliptical eyes and wizened grins stare blankly through arched orange eyebrows; their bizarre black skeletons are like Indonesian shadow puppets, awkwardly stretching and joining behind a light box. Long necked characters with curving beaks, pointed wings and wicked amber glints sit under peacock-eyed nights full of stars; the outlines of leaves in jet and sapphire are a cuckoo-clock for stick birds. They watch meteor showers, fall out of the sun and wander about lonely in the fog; they peer round corners with suspicion or stare off into the distance resolutely.

Pejman is an improvisational artist, working straight onto his canvases without planning what the finished piece will be. The blank page compels him to create form and colour, drawing them out of instinct. With each stab in the dark, the artist mesmerises us with the unseen things that lurk below the surface. The wind howls and witch doctors present their sacrifices wearing truly terrible masks. Bringing his compositions to life with fierce graffiti, this young Picasso-Basquiat is surely a force to be reckoned with. Inside his spellbound worlds, the word becomes flesh.