Excerpt from the Essay By Dr. Michael Sgan-Cohen in the Catalogue of the Exhibition “The Visible, The Reflected and The Imagined” 1991-1992, at the Museum for Israeli Art Ramat-Gan.
In recent years Farideh’s work has changed and developed. ….. Now she has turned from the obvious in ‘natur”‘, to the concealed. Her “Text” is denser, more monochronic and concentrated. She does close-ups of a kind, which bring her closer to the texture of reality, as in a parable.
The format most frequent in Farideh’s current works is double-imaged, dual, two “samples” in one work. ……. In her works there are many “samples”, like a surface done in Pollack’s technique of dripping and spilling, which here looks like a “sample” of Polack, and more “samples” from the older Monet, or a design like William Morris, or a fragment from Johns, or a color from Zaritsky or Stymatsky, or …….. .
Farideh shows that there is resemblance , and there is need for imagination, because there is a resemblance between forms of looking, even the most different. There is an analogy between the illusionistic and abstract, between the quasi-impressionistic-abstract ( in a kind of reflection that resembles a painting of the late Monet or Zaritsky ) and the “sample” of the abstract, which recalls the abstract of Richter. In effect , Farideh muses in painting about the unbearable ease, as it were, with which the experienced post-modern eye changes ways of looking, painting as a video-clip, a texture of seconds.
By Gil Goldfine
A FRESH VIEW OF NATURE
In his catalog essay for an exhibit of paintings by FARIDEH ( Farideh Golbahar, b. Teheran, 1942 ), entitled “The Visible, The Reflected and the Imagined” Dr. Michael Sgan-Cohen describes her work as having…….. “turned from the obvious in nature to the concealed”. He goes on to identify Farideh`s approach to painting in a perplexing , often speculative manner, using philosophical and historical background data which attempts to build an intellectual ized mystique around a perfectly understandable and visually pleasing art form.
For Farideh has simply confronted, observed, remembered, imagined and recalled distant landscapes, intimate ponds with surrounding marshland and clearly defined details of plants and flowers. She digested this plethora of natural shapes and patterns, both perceived and dreamed and recycled them into a group of oils on paper which are not only beautifully painted, but are seriously considered in terms of their subjective conventions and their placement in the history of landscape and still life as subject matter.
Farideh has presented the theme in a fresh and unusual manner.ach picture contains two same-size rectangles placed edge to edge in the center of a large white sheet of paper, an exercise which removes her art from any form of illusionistic realism and isolates it as an independent statement, removed from its natural influence. Each half, rendered differently from its companion in terms of color, painting technique and imagery, nevertheless reflects something of the partner`s iconographic quality. It might be that Farideh picks up and exaggerates the gestural rustling of floral petals in an action painting mode or interprets the speckled density of compressed leaves in a more conservative, ornamental fashion. In other paintings, subdued fields of a watery turquoise and rich leaf greens echo the intimacy of a darkened glade or a shallow river bed. Close-ups become unrecognizeable abstractions, graphically stated with pure pigment and lively movements of the brush and palette knife.
Using oil and industrial Superluc paint ( mostly polished greens, whites and blacks ) with controlled flair, Farideh`s purist outlook permits her to swing with ease from the decotative and calligraphic to the lyrical and expressionist styles of Israeli art. More concerned with the concepts of nature than with distinctive features, Farideh seeks to redefine, or possibly present alternatives , to the way we look at nature. ( Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan ).
The Jerusalem Post Magazine , January 10, 1992