A Meeting in Iran: the search for peace in the surrealism art of Erfan Eskamaei

Have you ever dreamed or believed to fall into a ditch or to have your head in the clouds, while the two cerebral hemispheres are replaced by two skyscrapers that reach in their verticality the infinity?

In which reality do we find ourselves? It seems an emotional sphere called “surreal”; a dreamlike dimension , far away from our daily routine where everything loses logicality . Yet, in this universe, we are still capable of living human feelings, strong and true emotions as it true is the existence of our body, which in sleep is still vibrant, still able to sense touch, to feel the music and the voices, to taste the sweet and bitter flavours, to see the spaces and colours. This is not a dream, but an experience in the conscious, partially hidden from our rationality that you can turn into visual images. These are reflections on which I indulge myself in approaching the works of the Iranian photographer surrealist, Erfan Eskamaei , and while I browse his pictures, I realize that he has created masterfully in visual forms, semantic combinations seemingly so unrelated , to obtain new sensations of strong aesthetic value. What strikes me in the whole production is the total absence of the heads in the subjects represented . It is a way of emphasizing in absentia , the element from which it originated the concept of surrealism . It is, in fact, in the mind, located in the centre of the head, that images are generated ; in this art those images follow a complex game of associations, from the paths sometimes obscure . It is in the mind that concepts are created and once they have been generated exit the head that now, as it seems to be suggested by the works of Erfan Eskamaei,  emptied from its contents, has no reason to exist. It is in this art that you create unpredictable balances; images defy any logical process and the conscious element tries to reach, until they merge with it, the unconscious; it is like watching the race of two parallel lines, which by now, tired of chasing infinity, find their truce in a common point of contact.

Peace Lost 01

The photographic work of Erfan, inspired by the great tradition of the surrealist Man Ray to Philippe Halsman , have a strong poetic value; they reinvent reality through a clever use of photo editing techniques such as collage that let to follow and express with no limits, mutations, and the flow of his imaginative thinking . The automatism process mentioned by André Breton , pioneer of surrealism, find in these images its corresponding contemporary. This is where the unexpected vision surprises us by its absurdity and contradicts our beliefs.

Peace Lost 02

What defines the aesthetic value in this art is therefore no longer merely a technical process, but a pure mental act, a concept explored through a careful reading of the symbols used, sometimes obvious, sometimes scattered and hidden throughout the composition. It will be up to the observer to investigate them and try to reconstruct the path traced by the artist until we connect with his own wavelength. Sometimes this means to penetrate into the depths of his unconscious, to confront ourselves with their own judgment and be aware to undertake a journey of infinite ways out. Thousand may be the interpretations of this work and they would all have the same validity.

In the photos of Erfan there is a strong symbolism that reminds me of the concepts of freedom and peace, and I can not help but notice the imprint of Christian iconography : the dove with the eye and direction bewildered and her feathers drifting in the air, appears in most of the series Lost Peace.

Peace Lost 03

Peace Lost 04

Here, the absence of war or peace are defined in all their manifestations: the chaos created by the war machines that man seeks at all costs to avoid such a danger, the more bleak desolation that comes in front of a building that is now derelict and forgotten.A prison, perhaps, that no longer has a reason to exist. All presented through the neutral images, almost as if the reality had lost the colours and flavours of life.

Fall

So what to do when you reach the bottom and hide the “head” in the aridity of a totalizing rationalism? The message of Erfan comes to us for help. Regenerate our naked bodies, our souls, but especially our creativity, immersing us in metaphorical centrifuges and leaving intact the residuals of our formal clothes, our prejudices!

Body Wash

And from the chaos of words and sounds you come peacefully to peace of mind, in which the man comes into direct contact with nature, he identifies with it to the point of reaching a strong metamorphosis, where his head is transformed into plant . The dryness of the soil gradually gives way to the liveliness of the green.

The Green Mind

It is thanks to the ability to imagine and to think for themselves that the man regains his freedom in a physical and metaphorical universe that has deprived him of this privilege. The art, so, has reached this double miracle: to give an aesthetic value , allowing us to gain distant forms of contemplation, sources of escape from everyday life, and to help to get rid of the systematic aridity of our actions, giving voice to our ego often buried by different dynamics of repression.

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