Mahmoud Meraji was born on February 18, 1958 in Tehran. He started painting in 1974, and in 1998, immigrated to Canada with his wife and son. Throughout the years he has been experimenting with different mediums, and he is now more focused on working with pastel and oil color. His art work spans Classicism, Realism and Surrealism. The present series are the result of his endeavor in Modernism.
Mahmoud Meraji
I had noticed a modernist trend in Mahmoud Merhaji’s work, an insistence on creating a new reality despite his obvious adeptness at portraiture and realistic depiction. The super realism associated with the pop movement (Chuck Close), and then with the recent New German Painters has taken realistic depiction back into vogue.
This could have been an expected progression in Mahmoud Meraji’s work - to continue, with such a strong hand, his portraiture. Yet he insisted on making steps forward into the unknown, into modernism.
There is an old world craftsmanship in Mahmoud Meraji’s unique visions. He has the hand of a fine drawer that can lay rightful claim to the glory of admiration at his talent and ability to depict. He uses his technical ability to support a far more inaccessible narrative.
Like the story-line of dreams where the connections are hard to make but the sense is embedded in the memorable impact of the visual, so his figures and their situations veer away from logic to enter a more instinctual realm. He uses a vocabulary of images that seem to possess romantic underpinnings.
The work is subtle and classy, intellectual and yet fresh. His use of colors illustrates his taste, it is never too much, sparingly doled out to accentuate the detailed rendering.
Mahmoud uses repetition in a symphonic sense, subverting rhythms in favour of a melody that forms agreeable successions and arrangements of shapes and movements. It is a classical melody with attention to form lending a general effect of balance while the emotions are distant and collected. Mahmoud Meraji is graceful in his depiction. He is discrete with a gentleman’s manners. And because of these layers of meanings, not quite revealed, but refined and cultured, the work touches the finer aspects of our own connoisseurship.
It invites us into the Meraji realm, one of good breeding where the origins of drawing are accomplished and can thus enter into higher conversations.
If the iconography is not always clear, it is because there is a learning process in place and Meraji is teaching us how to see his world as he offers a respite from the clarion perspective of contemporary depersonalization.
Julie Oakas
Exhibitions
2007 Varley Gallery of Markham, Canadian Artists without Boarder
2007 Ethnic Convergence Headones Gallery,Toronto
2006 Headbones Galley(Iran, Iran, I ran with Bogos)
2006 Under the Azure Dome – Harbourfront Centre
2005 John B. Aird Gallery
2004 Metamorphosis (SAC), Toronto , Ontario
2004 Arta Gallery
2003 John B.Aird Gallery Toronto , Ontario
2002 Illuminary Art Gallery
2002 Scarborough Art Council, Annual Juried
Show Scarborough , Ontario
2001 A celebration of the Arts North York,Ontario
2001 Art at the heart (Arts week2001)
2001 Downsview Library, Toronto , Ontario
2001 Odyssey (SAC) Scarborough , Ontario
2001 Art at the heart, Toronto , Ontario
2000 Brooksbanks Library, Toronto , Ontario
2000 39th Annual Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition
2000 Agincourt library
1999 38th Annual Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition
1998 Transition: Changing States (S.A.C.) Ontario
1997 The Third Iranian painting Biannual
1995 Golestan Art Gallery , Tehran , Iran
1995 Kavaran Cultural Institute , Tehran , Iran
1993 Fair of Flowers and Nature , Tehran , Iran
1993 The Second Iranian Painting Biannual
1993 Azadi Cultural Centre , Tehran , Iran
1992 The First Iranian Painting Biannual
1991 City Theater City Theater , Tehran , Iran
1988 Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts
1986 Yasmine Institute , Tehran , Iran
1985 Niyavaran Cultural Centre , Tehran , Iran
One Man Shows
1997 Iranian Community Association of Ontario
1997 Arya Art Gallery, Tehran , Iran
1996 Arya Art Gallery , Tehran , Iran
1993 Golestan Art Gallery, Tehran , Iran
1991 Golestan Art Gallery, Tehran , Iran
Achievements
2002 Honorable mention Award, Scarborough Art Council, Toronto , Ontario
2001 Honorable mention Award, Art at the heart, Toronto , Ontario
1993 First Prize Winner, Iranian Fair of Flowers & Nature , Tehran , Iran
