Exhibition Statement
This is a factory, located in the middle of an industrial town—or, more precisely, a gallery built within the grounds of a factory, in the heart of an industrial zone. For this reason, it inevitably recalls the historical bond between art and industry, or between the artist and the artisan. At least for me, it evokes a time when these two were companions—long eras in which the artist was part of the broader guild of craftsmen, when creativity had not yet been exclusively tied to art, and when the concept of the artist was not associated with the intellectual elite or with social or political activism.
In the eras that followed, it was industrialists who—through what we now call large businesses—connected creativity with their manufactured goods and, more importantly, with the encouragement of mass consumption. After the historical separation of art from the crafts of artisans, it seems another revolution occurred: industry, now in the form of business, not only referred back to that historical connection but also began to employ art itself, asking the artist for what we call creativity in order to sell its products more effectively to the amorphous mass of consumers.
The passage of time has still not been able to resolve the question of the connection or separation between these two—art and industry—perhaps because they are so deeply intertwined, like many other fundamental concepts or binary oppositions, that separating them is not impossible, but certainly extremely difficult.
What you see here does not represent all aspects of the connection or separation between art and industry, nor does it directly resemble earlier efforts such as the Arts and Crafts movement of the early twentieth century. The works speak in different tones—sometimes pessimistic, sometimes ironic, sometimes appreciative, and sometimes hopeful. Perhaps this is largely because they are being presented in our current conditions, in this turbulent corner of the world. They seem less an opportunity to recall this connection or separation, and more an expression of the shared difficulties and constraints that make the growth of creativity in any context increasingly challenging. And perhaps they remind us of something that only art can recall: holding on to hope—a hope whose faint light may not even be visible in the distance.
Hafez Rouhani / 2025
List of Artists (Alphabetical Order)