Draft:Mojé Assefjah

Mojé Assefjah (*1970 in Tehran) is a German-Iranian artist.

In spring 2022, the Lenbachhaus in Munich showed her works from the collection of the " Dip In The Past" her works from the collection of the Lenbachhaus and the KiCo Foundation.The KiCo Foundation is acquiring further works for the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus collection.

Life
Mojé Assefjah was born into a family of artists in Tehran. Both parents studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tehran. Her family left Iran in 1986 and moved to Munich, where Assefjah graduated from high school and initially studied Japanese Studies, Oriental Studies and Spanish at the LMU. From 1992, she studied simultaneously at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and graduated in painting in 1999 as a master student of Jerry Zeniuk. In the same year, she received the award for Education and Research from the Bundeskunsthalle. She spent 1999 in Rome on a DAAD scholarship, where she intensively studied Renaissance painting, fresco painting and the egg tempera technique. In the same year, the exhibition "Viva La Pittura" took place at the Heinz Herzer Gallery. , from which the Städtische Galerie Lenbachhaus and the KiCo Foundation purchased her first works

Her works are represented in various public collections, including the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Guangdong Art Museum and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus. Since 2000, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in various European cities, as well as in the Middle East, Asia and the USA. At Art Basel 2004, she had a solo show entitled "The Seven Gardens" with Galerie S 65. In 2009, she took part in the group exhibition "L 'Iran San Frontières" at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris. In 2010 she showed her work for the first time in Beirut with the Tanit Gallery (Munich, Beirut) with the title: "Water For My Flower, Wind For My Tree."

In 2013 she went to New York as part of the ISCP scholarship and got to know some international artists and curators such as Chus Martínez, who nominated her for the "Werk Stoff" prize in 2021 as part of an exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein. In 2021, she showed her work for the first time in Tehran at the renowned Etemad Gallery with the title: "Remembered Landscapes" and had a solo presentation "Par La Fenêtre" at Art Paris with Galerie Tanit.

In spring 2022, the Lenbachhaus in Munich showed her works from the collection of the Lenbachhaus and the KiCo Foundation in the group exhibition "Dip In The Past". The KiCo Foundation was acquiring further works for the Lenbachhaus collection. In the solo exhibition "Tales from the Waves", Gallery Joeun in Seoul showed Assefjah's works in November 2023. Her works are also presented by the gallery at various fairs such as Kiaf and Art Busan since 2022.

Work
In her paintings, the German-Iranian artist develops her own distinctive visual language. By applying multiple thin layers using the almost-forgotten egg tempera technique and India ink, the artist produces color effects which evoke the Italian frescoes of the early Renaissance. The lush hues of the darker loops in the foreground of the picture contrast with the chalky tonality of the background. Although the artist is committed to non-representative painting, her paintings nonetheless convey a feeling of spatiality and conjure up associations with landscapes and figure. Assefjah’s pictorial worlds are characterized by lightness and structural density, with the alternation of transparency and opacity, daytime and darkness creating a mysterious and atmospheric quality. In her latest works, Mojé Assefjah develops a new variant of her specific tightrope walk between abstraction and figuration, present and past and Western and Eastern visual and pictorial cultures. At the same time, the tention between construction and intuition is explored not as a declination of a dialectic, but as a groping exploration of the immeasurable. She explores all the shoals of proximity and distance, solidity and transparency, and the tangible and the intangible. The colors can be strong and rich, almost haptic, yet make it possible to experience all the nuances of transparency nearing invisibility and transcendence.

“...While the calligraphic dimensions of the works are associated with Assefjah´s Persian roots, they also feed on familiarity with East Asian art. The idiosyncratic pictorial language is so densely saturated with the visual experiences of sumptuosus robe studies of Western Renaissance painting...” “...Assefjah's color-drenched paintings evoke the splendor of wonderful blossoms, lush meadows, forests, and rushing waters, yet unfathomable shallows or vast horizons open next to voluptuously arching and sweeping ornaments...” “...With brushstrokes that can be delicate yet with force, Assefjah unfolds visual-poetic philosophical explorations of the fluid boundaries between the real and the imaginary. In our late-modern digital present, which confronts us with shiny illusions everywhere, Assefjah's images offer concrete sensual invitations to face the seductions of real haptic beauty with poetic precision. “ Prof. Dr. Anne-Marie Bonnet, exhibition catalogue, Seoul „ Tales from the Waves“

“...Mojé Assefjah’s visual scripts bring to life our imagination.” “… is an invitation to a journey toward the horizon, a solitary stroll across the visible and sensible continuum’s theater, a window in which the world is seen and there “all would whisper.” Clémence Cottard Hashem, the exhibition catalogue, Beirut: „Invitation to the Voyage“,

“The intensity of movement, colourful transparency, physicality and ambiguity of the richly illuminated, by no means squeamish colour forms, which occupy the surface in a generously rhythmic arrangement, create a perceptual climate in which memories of the colouring and compositional schemes of 14th and 15th century Italian fresco painting,...” Sigird Feeser, Kunstforum (April/May 2001)

Artist statement
Each painting is to me a vision, a scene, a view. They are an invitation for the eye to look through a window opened to a nostalgic space. I like to tell stories of dreamed landscapes between abstraction and figurationen.

Awards and Scholarships
2024      	Award for a Scholorship by Stiftung KUNSTFONDS

2021       	Shortlisted for the WERK.STOFF award for painting byChus Martinez, Head of Basel Art Institut

2013	  	Residency at International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, NEW YORK

2006-07	  	Scholarship of the HWP: "The Other View", Munich, Germany

2000	  	Grant of the GOLART-STIFTUNG: Mural painting, Kunstverein Friedberg, Wetterau-Museum,Friedberg, Germany

1999-2000	Annual Scholarship of the DAAD for Rome, Italy

1999	   Arts Grant, federal competition by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

1995 	   Erasmus Scholarship at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Madrid, Spain

Public Collections
Municipal Gallery at the Lehnbachhaus, Munich, Germany;

Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany;

Guangdong Art Museum, China;

Pinakothek der Moderne, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany.

Gabriele Münter- and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich, Germany;

Munich RE, Munich, Germany.

DekaBank-Kunstsammlung, Frankfurt a. Main, Germany;

Artothek, Munich, Germany;

Max-Planck-Institut, Munich, Germany;

HypoVereinsbank, Munich, Germany;

HUK-Coburg;

Siemens AG, Munich, Germany;

Allianz Insurance, Munich, Germany;

D.A.S. Insurance;

LHI Leasing GmbH;

Collection BHW Holding AG, Hameln, Germany;

Hamburg Mannheimer, Hamburg, Germany;

Association of the Sparda Banks, Frankfurt a. M., Germany;

Collection Osram, Munich, Germany;

Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank, Düsseldorf/Munich, Germany;

Studiensammlung der Diözese Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany; Colección olorVISUAL, Barcelona, Spain;

BIZ Bank für internationale Zahlungsausgleich, Basel, Switzerland;

Solo Exhibitions (Selections)
2023 Tales from the waves”, Joeun Gallery, Seoul, South Korea „My Song Of Love For You“, Open Art, Galerie Tanit, Munich

2022 "I Can Still Feel the Breeze", Joeun Gallery, Seoul, South Korea "Embrace of Memory", Neue Galerie Landshut, Germany

2021 Monographic exhibition, “Par la Fenêtre”, Art Paris, France "Remembered Landscapes", Etemad Gallery, Tehran, Iran "There Are Birds Here Again", Starco, Beirut, Lebanon

2020 "You Will Rise Up Again", Project Room 5, Galerie Tanit,, Munich, Germany

2018 "I Cover the Waterfront", Galerie Graf und Schelble, Basel, Switzerland

2016 Darmian", Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany

2015 "So Close, Yet So Far", Galerie Nanna Preußners, Hamburg, Germany "On the Other Side of The Grape Gardens", Galerie Tanit, Beirut, Lebanon"Nostalgia, Blau ist die Farbe Deines Flügels", Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany

2014 "I Cover the Waterfront", +R, Barcelona, Spain "Down to The River", Galerie Graf Und Schelble, Basel, Switzerland

2013

ISCP, International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York

2012 Schaltwerk Kunst, Hamburg, Germany "Il giardino e la duna", Ecke Galerie Augsburg, Germany

2011 "A Vista D’occhio", Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany

2010 "Water for My Flower, Wind for My Tree" Espace Kettaneh Kunigk, Beirut, Lebanon

2008 "Shabtab", Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany

2007 Galerie Graf und Schelble Basel, Switzerland

2006 "Jam-avary", OSRAM ART PROJECTS, Munich, Germany

2005 Galerie S 65, Cologne, Germany

2005 Galerie Koos und Heufelder, Munich, Germany

2004 Lálba faccheva occhio”, GalerieS65, Aalst, Belgium Die sieben Gärten", Art Basel, l with Galerie S65, Basel, Switzerland

Selected Group Exhibitions
2024 piece of Mind,Joeun Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

2023 Boghossian foundation, MENART with Galerie Tanit, Villa Ampain, Brussels

2022 "Dip in The Past", Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany

2021 Shortlisted by Chus Martinez for the WERK.STOFF award for painting, Kunstverein Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

2019 Galerie Graf und Schelble, Basel, Switzerland Female Artists of The Middle East", Tsichritzis Visual Art Foundation, Athens, Greece

2018 Neue Galerie Dachau, Dachau, Germany

2017 "Künstlerinnen Aus Dem Morgenland", Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany

2016 "Morphology of The Archive", Museum of Goa, Goa, India

2011 "The Nightingale and The Rose", Rathausgalerie München, Munich, Germany

2009 "L’iran Sans Frontières", Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, France

2005 "Universal Painting", Guandong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, Shanghai, China

1999 "Kunststudenten Stellen Aus" at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany