Untitled, N/A
Nasser Bakhshi (b. 1982, Tabriz, Iran) is a self-taught artist working across a variety of media. Living and working in Tabriz, Nasser Bakhshi established his Contemporary Archive Museum in 2022 in his home city to house a assorted collection of documents, objects, and artworks that trace a common history. His latest exhibition with Dastan was "Black Box" (+2, 2021) concurrent with the launch of a book by the same name (Nazar Publishing, 2021). A touch of delicacy and a lavish degree of precision accompanies even the most gothic paintings of Nasser Bakhshi. Perhaps that's why he is known first and foremost as a portrait artist. His portraits, however, are studies, components for his mechanical sculptures, which he calls "box"es. These boxes may be small in size or seven meters long and three meters tall. What they share is a vertiginous collection of objects and moving parts, often ditached from their original function to hint at their possible larger meanings – devises to surveil, torture, and dehumanize.