Private Collection, Europe 

This work is in very good condition. There are some light wear to the upper left corner of the composition. The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, with an overall tonality tending more towards a soft ivory.
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Regarded as one of the most recognized international contemporary artists from his generation, Farhad Moshiri relentlessly reconciles the ancient with the modern which is at the core of his oeuvre.

 In 9NMR1, the artist executes a characteristic and increasingly iconic splay of chaotic abjad script in bold and enigmatic black across a flecked cream canvas. This formula, visible in inverted colours and varying styles across Moshiri’s oeuvre, is undoubtedly the product of an intense cultural blending which expresses both his early inculcations as an adolescent in Iran during the Islamic revolution and his training at CalArts, where he experimented with installations, vওideo art and painting before returning to Tehran in 1991.

9NMR1 represents the artist’s experiments in reconciling the archaic with the twisted uncertainty of the present. Moshiri’s instrument is a visual vocabulary of symbolic numbers and letters said to have talismanic and protective qualities in Iranian culture. Rendered in a graffiti like fashion across the canvas, Moshiri’s abstracted calligraphy is referential to the bombardment of the abjad which is plastered across the streets of Tehran and adorns Iranian garments🅺, but is also reminiscent of Western Abstract Expressionism.

The effect is a sophisticated trompe-l’oeil; 9NMR1 appears from a distance as a traditional geometric calligraphic pattern, but upon closer inspection, is discovered to be rife with incongruencies and contradictions.  This is further emphasized by the texture of the worked canvas, which mimics ancient jars and vases of a bygone civilisation. Mosh💙iri achieves his signature technique by applying the pigments to the canvas which he then repeatedly folds, crushes, and veneers with glue to prevent any deterioration, effectively freezing the teleologically confused work in its present state. The rich variety of Moshiri's oeuvre not only lies in his creativeness as both a painter and a conceptual ꦬartist, but they are primarily imbued with the artist's self-reflection and his observation of present life in Iran.