ADELAIDE.- ACE Open premieres a new solo exhibition, In Love, by renowned multi-disciplinary artist, Hossein Valamanesh. Drawing upon the artist’s fascination with enduring ideas of love, existence and the nature of being, In Love features a major new architectural commission – Enter – and premieres video work, Passing, to South Australian audiences. In Love is on exhibition 8 August – 28 September, 2019. The concept of Enter has evolved from a series of works on paper into a translucent structure that allows the viewer to enter, interact and become a part of the work. This experience transforms the work to “become alive” as outside viewers observe others in the work and are in the work itself.

Enter is presented alongside the two-channel moving image installation Passing, 2014, in collaboration with Nassiem Valamanesh, which depicts both the oncoming and departing views of a meditative rail journey filmed in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

“As artists we are privileged to love what we do and I have been preoccupied with the concept of love both in life and art for more than fifty years now,” shares Valamanesh, who has an extensive history of over 90 solo and group exibitions including: Where do I come from?, Aaran Projects Tehran Iran (2017), Char Soo, Adelaide Film Festival, Samstag Museum, Adelaide (2015); Hossein Valamanesh: Selected works 1992-2013, Grey Noise Gallery, Dubia, UAE (2013); and Australia, Royal Academy of the Arts, London, England (2013).

“Hossein Valamanesh is a highly distinguished contemporary South Australian artist, known for his capacity to capture complex emotions in his work,” says Patrice Sharkey, Artistic Director at ACE. “ACE Open is proud to not only be presenting his work, but to invest in the development of a major new work; Enter is both a poetic and structural feat, that pushes the theatrical and architectural elements of Valamanesh’s practice.”

In Love is ACE Open’s South Australian Artist Commission for 2019, presented as part of SALA Festival. Hossein Valamanesh is represented by GAGPROJECTS.

Hossein Valamanesh was born in 1949 in Iran and graduated from the School of fine art in Tehran in 1970. He immigrated to Australia in 1973. and graduated from South Australian School of Art, 1977. He has exhibited in Australia and overseas including Germany, Poland, Japan, Pakistan, Finland, UK, Canada and Iran

With Angela Valamanesh he has completed a number of major public art commissions including An Gorta Mor, memorial to the Great Irish Famine, 1999, Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney and 14 Pieces on North Terrace, in Adelaide and Ginkgo Gate, a new western entrance to the Botanic Gardens, Adelaide.

He was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship 1998. His work is included in most major public Australian art collections. A major survey of his work was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia in mid 2001 and Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, 2002. In 2014 he undertook a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC.

In 2011 Wakefield Press published a monograph of his work, titled Hossein Valamanesh, Out of nothingness, with essays by Mary Knights and Ian North.

He lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia and is represented by GAGPROJECTS Adelaide, Grey Noise Dubai.