Howtan (b. 1974)
Related: controversial - visual arts
Scream of War (2002) - Howtan
Profile
Howtan was born in Teheran in 1974. Spending his childhood and youth in the USA, now Howtan still lives in this country. This artist spends a lot of time in Italy. His first exhibition took place in Contrarte Gallery in Rome.
The photo technique, which is used by this artist, includes application of object surface photos, which depth and sequence is found not at the first sight but gradually.
The concept of the Hell and Paradise exhibition, which fragments were demonstrated by Stella Art Gallery at Art Moscow, is dualism of opposite and compatible features of the human soul. All the works of this series are left untitled with the intention by the artist, because, in his opinion, a spectator should become not only an observer but also an active participant of this exhibition.
In the opinion of Howtan, his mission is demonstrating imperfectness of contemporary community and revealing its defects. In his works from the Hell and Paradise series, he uses blood, flowers, water, feathers as the symbols of creative protest against the indifference of surrounding world.
Together with the UNO, in June 2005, in Monaco, the exhibition with the works of Howtan will be opened, which major theme will be the problem of hunger in the world. --http://www.stellaartgallery.com/eng/future/ [Sept 2004]
Body Art
From Body Art to Viennese actionism, from cartoons to pornography, from fashion to erotic films, from sado-masochism to voyeurism Howtan, with inspired kleptomania, recaptures linguistic stimula from a family of artists who are not linked to each other by bonds of kinship: Artaud, Kubric, Serrano, Golden, Araki, Abramovich, La Chapelle, Kern. Howtan is thus able to take his stand before the new situation with a focus that fosters the work and mentality of his times, and to transfer to the photographic image the temporaliy that governs art, the excellent movement that aggregates and simultaneously disarranges the various components of the work. --http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/h/howtan/artist_reviews.html [Sept 2004]Controversial Advertising [...]
The April Art in America carried a photograph that made me so angry I decided I wasn't going to buy the magazine again, or even look at it. The photo, on page 62 -- called "Scream of War," and showing a kneeling, white-painted nude woman vomiting blood (here, if you must) -- was a full-page ad for Howtan Howtan, who thinks he's a cross between Helmut Newton and Hermann Nitsch. --http://www.thetearsofthings.net/archives/000136.html [Aug 2004]
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