“Poushosh” Collages are totally and fundamentally conceptual. For their creation is based on mere idea and concept. And technique and material are the secondary elements in them not the main. Some of the chosen material such as extracts from fashion journals would be ruined or forgotten if they weren’t used in these collections. But this collage revived them, reanimated them with a new life and function. Above all they have helped the artist and the artist has helped them.
“Poushosh” Collages are totally and fundamentally conceptual. For their creation is based on mere idea and concept. And technique and material are the secondary elements in them not the main. Some of the chosen material such as extracts from fashion journals would be ruined or forgotten if they weren’t used in these collections. But this collage revived them, reanimated them with a new life and function. Above all they have helped the artist and the artist has helped them.
statement.
Farshido Larimian’s artworks, in different stages, have been inspired by the concept of childhood and trauma. This project is following the previous works but with a difference: This series focuses on two concepts: childhood and monster.
Monster includes different types. One of them is the serial killer type. What became the main theme and the inspiration source for this series was the serial killings of Andre Chikatilo’s serial killings in Rostov in the 80s. Most of Chikatilo’s victims were children. He chased them in the parks, around schools, on a train station, and after committing his crimes he buried them in a forest.
He had bought a hut in the forest in order to use it as a safe place for his ominous crimes. There he committed his first murder. He attempted to rape a 9 year old girl named Yelena Zakotnova, he failed to achieve an erection. When the girl struggled he choked her and ejaculated while stabbing the child.
After Chikatilo was finally arrested, he confessed to the sexual assault and murder of 54 women and children of both sexes, and he was executed to death.
This set of works resembles a journey. A journey to the field of “The Uncanny” or the original German Freudian term “Unheimlich” which reminds the word “Un-Homely” to the mind. The object that doesn’t belong to the home. The thing which is ‘’allein’’ (alien.) But unlike the lexical meaning the roots of the Uncanny can be detected in a well-known place in everyday life and the reality we deal with. We have forgotten it because of the repression mechanism. Monsters belong to the field of the Uncanny too. With a Freudian viewpoint we can say that the monster is the objectification of the repressed. Within the process of the artistic creation, we have seen the objectification of the repressed as well. Monsters have been represented through art. What Farshido needed to make these series work was to move toward the extremes, toward representing the opposite extremes of childhood’s innocence and monstrosity; and he reached that point. He creates a theatrical detection to lead us toward the truth and catastrophe. The dogs are sniffing to find the rotting bodies and we are sniffing the truth with our senses through a time travel and finally we can feel the terror and the bizarre experience of a transition between innocence and monstrosity. Farshido has reached his target. He has summoned the monster.
✒︎ Adel Hashemi
The location of the installation for this series:
A U-shape salon, or a U-shape corridor, with walls that are covered with white tiles.
The U-shape corridor includes chambers in which artworks are installed. Every chamber's entrance is covered with transparent plastic cover with a vertical cut in the middle, which functionally resembles a transparent curtain. Using transparent plastic cover creates blurriness, vagueness, and curiosity before confrontation.
And the artworks at the middle of the U-turn (Chamber 05, Chamber 06 & Chamber 07) are covered with white plastic curtain, So that the visitors can drag the curtain and suddenly face the artworks. There are two reasons behind this type of presentation. Firstly to lead the visitors to a sudden confrontation with intense emotional fluidity of the artworks, and secondly to apply the visitors' choice and action in the process of confrontation.
This series is inspired by cliches of "horror" in fact and fiction; The only genre in which cliches are crucial to make the elements of twist and terror work.
I'd rather add this point that the U-shape reminds the "U" letter in the title of the series "Unheimlich". a close bond between content and structure. when the visitors enter the salon or corridor they have no horizon when they look forward. They don't know what to expect after the U-turn. but their destination, where they end up is so close to the entrance point.
✒︎ Farshido
