Omid Delafrouz - The Lost Image: Stockholm

ndréhn-Schiptjenko has the pleasure to announce Omid Delafrouz second solo-exhibition, The Lost Image, at the gallery. 

Omid Delafrouz has made himself known for his detail oriented drawings and digital printouts which are packed with references from the 1980s and 1990s. In his new exhibition at Andréhn-Schiptjenko Omid continues his archaeological excavation of the history of the image itself, however, this time he leaves out the original drawing in order to only exhibit the end result: the scanned and digitally revised printout.

Each image is filled with objects that mark specific time periods within popular culture, each individual element refers to other parts of the work and together they create layers of meaning and narratives. The work During the ghostly hour serves as a good example of this method. An exhausted girl lies on a bed under a poster from the Moderna Museet’s exhibition Hon by Niki de Saint Phalle. It is the sleeping woman’s history of motif, with the sleeping beauty in the middle, surrounded by record sleeves, art reproductions and stickers.

The large central piece in the exhibition – Josef’s sleep – is three meters long and two meters high. This image is a reinterpretation and revaluation of the biblical motif of Josef’s sleep, which has been interpret throughout the history of art by artists such as Rembrandt and Georges de La Tour and others. The image is meant to give a first key to the overall thematic scheme that structures all of Omid’s earlier works.

The History of the Lost Image 

I try to prepare a worthy symbol or epitaph for the atmosphere of the culture I grew up in. For us who grew up during the last years of the 20th century in a culture obsessed with images, surface and consumption, I suspect that the richness of the atmosphere does not quite allow itself to be known, in any other form than through the still image’s historically unresolved tension between, what I would call, surface and depth, narrative and essence. Therefore, I have tried to develop an image-form that works as a sheltering place, where these differing areas of tension intrinsic to the image can be gathered, shown and preserved.

Omid Delafrouz.

Omid Delafrouz was born 1982 in Teheran, he graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2005 and finished his Masters degree at Valand Academy in 2007. He recently exhibited his work at Eskilstuna Konstmuseum and Göteborgs Konsthall.