Lives in Brooklyn, NY
Born 1968, Tehran, Iran
Visual Artist
After a long period of having the three areas of my practice-painting, drawing and filmmaking-as separate activities concerned with their own formal qualities and limitations, I have recently brought them on a level where the three interconnect closely. My films and paintings influence one another, and through creating drawings I investigate this influence.
In my most recent installations and performances I have incorporated composite projections of hand painted, hand manipulated slides and films onto layers of painted screens and panels. The resulting layers create a mesmerizing effect, making it difficult for the viewer to distinguish between what is the painting and what is the film image.
Most recently it is my films that influence my paintings, whereas before it was the paintings that initiated and shaped my filmmaking. My paintings brought abstraction to the vision I captured from the world on film and now the films are bringing elements of reality into my paintings.
2002 M.F.A., Pratt Institute
1992 B.F.A., The School of The Art Institute of Chicago
Professor of Drawing, Parsons The New School for Design
Professor of Drawing, The City College of New York, CUNY
2011 Cosmography (in collaboration with Briggan Krauss), The Kitchen, New York, NY
2010 Glean, Galeria Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain
2009 Shorthand of Sensation, Galerie Xippas, Paris, France
2008 Raha Raissnia, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Stele, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Anemophily, Galerie Xippas, Paris, France
2005 Aphelion, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY
2004 Epitaphios, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY
2004 Isfahan Museum of Contemporary Art, Isfahan, Iran
2010 Engaging the False Mirror, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
2010 The Alchemy of Things Unknown (and a Visual Meditation on Transformation), Khastoo Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Herd Thinner, Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami, FL
2009 Leave No Trace: Ridges, Troughs & Phantom Limbs, ISCP, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Don't Perish, Leo Koenig Inc., New York, NY
2009 Practice vs. Object, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
2007 Late Liberties, John Connelly Presents, New York, NY
2007 Form As Memory, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Holy Land: Diaspora and the Desert, Heard Museum of Native Cultures and Art, Phoenix, AZ
2006 Hands Up / Hands Down, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
2008 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
2001 Pratt Institute Delacroix Award for Painting Excellence
1999 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship
1998 Dodd's Travel Grant
| Year Awarded | 2011 |
| Category | Visual Art |
Raha Raissnia, photo courtesy of Galeria Marta Cervera
Raha Raissnia, photo courtesy of the artist 