Priska C. Juschka Fine Art is pleased to present Invitation to Change Your Metaphor, Nicky Nodjoumi’s second solo show at the gallery, an exhibition of paintings and drawings through the looking glass of Nodjoumi’s critical response to the political events in Iran, impacting the international community in the summer and fall of 2009. Nodjoumi conveys his personal discontent, deliberately and universally, enabling his audience to engage in a profoundly layered discourse beyond a specific historical context or location.

Divisions and lines through Nodjoumi’s figures and picture plane mark cultural dislocation, mirroring opposing value systems and emphasizing a sense of disparity. Despite its serious subject matter, his recent work embraces overt humor, implicit to any political culture, by caricaturizing his protagonists and by combining elements of undisguised nudity and sexuality with austere representations of Islamic culture and components of ostentatious Western chauvinism.

Nodjoumi employs a broadened and intermittently impromptu repertoire, inspired by protest culture, as an immediate reaction to the occurrences encompassing and ignited by the questionable Iranian presidential elections, and empowered by ad hoc channels of expression (street and poster art, social networking sites and text messaging).

Enriched with symbolism and vivid colors, his paintings strike a delicate balance between art and politics, between the visual and poetic freedoms of the individual and the apparent Expanded Rules of a reigning status quo. The formerly depicted Push and Pull between the pursuits of controversial world views in Nodjoumi’s paintings turns responsive, commenting repeatedly on actual onsets and partaking visually in the rage against injustice and oppression by confronting the viewer with political commentary and imagery directly fueled by news reports (I am Burning, NEDA).

As a fervent story teller, Nodjoumi’s outspoken compassion for the citizens of Iran, Caught in the Way and on the world stage challenging a relentless regime with uncompetitive means, captures through the ‘eyes of the other’ the essence of the human struggle against tyranny, oppression and inequality.

Nicky Nodjoumi was born in 1942 in Kermanshah, Iran and has lived and worked permanently in New York since 1981. He earned his BA from Tehran University of Fine Arts in Tehran, Iran and his MFA from the City College of New York in 1974. Nodjoumi’s work has been the subject of numerous national and international exhibitions including Iran Inside Out at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, NY and at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago, IL; the 10th Havana Biennial at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba; and a 1980 retrospective at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran. Nodjoumi co-curated Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran with Shirin Neshat at the Asia Society in New York, NY, and has been instrumental in the commemorative conference and art exhibition, The Life and Art of Ardeshir Mohassess, at New York University, October 8 – 10, 2010.