156 | MAY/JUN 2017 | ISSUE 103(This page)
Models rest on a work table.
(Opposite page, top)
Parts of various works scattered on the
floor of Sahand Hesamiyan’s studio. On
the left is the outer shell for his work
Gonbade Kabood (2012), the interior of
which will be covered by stainless steel.
(Opposite page, bottom left)
Sculptures in the middle of production.
(Opposite page, bottom right)
Interior view of Sahand Hesamiyan’s studio.I want,” Hesamiyan confides,
remarking on the serenity of the
space that provides both the scale
to construct big pieces and the
silence to conceive finer, more
profound details.
Splayed across the floor during
my visit are the parts of yet another
work, destined to grace the newly
opened Dubai Opera House. These
eventually formed Khalvat (2016),
a gleaming white, pinecone-shaped
work bristling with prism-like
scales that is settled gracefully in
Downtown Dubai. It is Hesamiyan’s
first permanent public sculpture
outside his home country. Visitors
engage with it as if encountering
a placid vessel spirited from
some other world. The title in
Farsi means “sanctuary,” and, like
much of Hesamiyan’s work, it
stems from a Sufi-like quest for
peace and timelessness. Through
Khalvat’s vaulted oculus, the
viewer can actually peer inside the
organic-looking oblong, a sanctum
where metastasizing patterns
and ornamental details recede
into infinity. Khalvat, like many
Hesamiyan sculptures, is a trance
made tangible.
At the time of my visit,
however, Khalvat has not yet been
realized. Its early forms appear as
piles of sheet-metal cutouts and
steel frames, each one nested inside
the other like a matryoshka doll.
Sitting nearby are clusters of
dismantled sections of Forough
(2016), a pair of large-scale
sculptures that was exhibited
in Nara last year, as part of the
Japanese city’s status as the
2016 Culture City of East Asia.
Like Khalvat, Forough riffs off the
traditional Rasmi dome in Iranian
architecture, and features not only
an opening through which the
intricate entrails of the work can
be seen, but also gilded exterior
sections, reflecting its name,
which means “brightness” in Farsi.
Created specifically for outdoor
display, Khalvat and Forough are
among the large-scale, public
artworks that Hesamiyan is known
for. Yet a smaller, solitary work
lying atop a worktable—the roughly
one-meter-long pointed sculpture
Nail (2012)—reminds me that
the artist is also skilled in gallery
presentations, and often adapts
his outdoor scale to surprising
effect indoors.
One such exhibition was
“Memory Lives On,” the artist’s
second solo show in 2011, atTehran’s Aun Gallery. The
eponymous work is a ladder-shaped
dome (with all the implications of
spiritual ascension) tipped on its
side, covered in UV paint and lit
by black lights, revealing changes
of color throughout the day and
night. “I like to show big pieces
in galleries,” admits Hesamiyan,
grinning. “Memory Lives On is
almost the same volume as the
gallery itself.” The work is entirely
transparent; no cladding hinders the
view, yet it is just as contemplative
as the myriad patterned repetitions
of the trance-like Khalvat. Similarly,
a 2015 exhibition entitled “Tavizeh,”
in Tehran’s Dastan’s Basement,
foregrounded a sculpture that left
little room for viewers to move
around it.
Unsurprisingly, monumentality
is always on Hesamiyan’s mind.
He is currently enmeshed in a
competition for the redesign of the
dome in Tehran’s Enghelab Square,
a stone’s throw from his alma
mater. The event has caused him to
wrestle with the problematic nature
of public sculpture in Tehran today.
“You can never satisfy everyone,”
he concludes, bemoaning the twisted
dynamics of a public commission
that expects a commemoration