Max Protetch Gallery is pleased to announce Murder In Tehran, an exhibition of new work by Siah Armajani in its Project Space. The exhibition runs from Tuesday, October 20 through Wednesday, December 23. The artist will be present at the opening reception on Tuesday, October 20, from 6:00 to 8:00pm. For select members of the press there will be a special artist’s preview prior to the opening.

Murder In Tehran is a single major work of new sculpture. Conceived and created by the Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based Armajani in the months following the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential elections, Murder In Tehran is a powerful political and formal statement. It represents an act born of outrage and solidarity with the Iranian people which combines elements of sculpture, architecture, and literature.

Measuring 11×6 x 6 feet, and composed of glass, wood, gravel, cast body parts, felt, masonite, paint, and applied poetry from the major contemporary Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlu, Murder In Tehran pays particular tribute to the sacrifices made by women in the 2009 protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to the Iranian presidency. This was perhaps most evident in the brutal shooting of Neda, whose death became an iconic image broadcast around the world. The work also commemorates the way in which Iranians took to their balconies in the days following June 12, to proclaim ‘God is Great!’ and denounce the government.

Murder In Tehran features a balcony-like structure that supports a human figure. This tableaux calls to mind the popular uprising of Iranians on their rooftops. Iran has a long history of martyrs who have lost their lives fighting for freedom and social justice, and Armajani’s work recognizes their central role in the course of Iranian culture.

At the base of the sculpture lie scattered casts of body parts littered among the gravel, a reference to the mass shallow graves that were found in different parts of Tehran in the weeks following the protests. Among them is a bloody hatchet, an illustration of the Shamlu poem whose text is inscribed on the sides of the piece: ‘The man who comes in the noon of the night/ has come to kill the light.// There the butchers are posted in the passageways/ with bloody chopping blocks and cleavers…’ By placing a sculptural illustration in proximity to the text itself, Armajani employs a technique present in ancient Persian miniatures, which contain illustration, description, and poetry on a single page.

There are also seven drawings in the show titled MURDER IN TEHRAN (AFTER GOYA), pencil on mylar.

Siah Armajani, born in Iran in 1939 and based in Minneapolis, is represented in some of the most important museum collections worldwide, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Walker Art Center, MAMCO Geneva, the Stedelijk Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and the Museum für Moderne Kunst. He has had recent one-person exhibitions at MAMCO, Geneva; The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City; and Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.