About Vahid Sharifian

Vahid Sharifian (born 1982) based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

His works has been featured at many venues like Ropac Gallery (Paris), James Fuentes LLC (New York), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, NY), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, UK), the Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art (Copenhagen, DK), Guangju Museum (South Korea) and Venice Biennale (2015).

His work has also been featured in ARTnews, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Art in America among numerous others. Vahid Sharifian is included in 100 New Artists by Francesca Gavin, published by Laurence King Publishers in 2011.

I am making art because I need to do that! It’s a response to the universe, when you don’t do any thing you get depressed because the universe is creating and moving all the time. You should walk with that! If you swim against the current on the river path you get tired and exhausted very fast! But if you go with the flow the waves help you out! I always try to break all taboos that religion and fears has made in our mind! My works are on the edge of poetry and porn and I balance it with a ZEN attitude!

But it’s not important if you’re painting is abstract or figurative, you just need to know what’s going on the field you’re working! I think we’re in a new Baroque/Rococo time, as shallow as it was and glorious. This time digitally and technological, although whatever we do comes from our mind, our obsessions, our dreams and our childhood, so we don’t need to try to say a big word or give advice to the world.

I’m a visual artist not a prophet or philosopher, it’s philosophers who need to analyze our mind, it’s not an artist obligation to illustrate philosophy! Unless we see the visual aesthetic comes before the words! All of the arts are linked together! You can’t be a great painter if you don’t know anything about literature, music, photography, cinema, architecture and even fashion design!

Just improve your knowledge about history of art, then do whatever you want! Don’t care what’s going on mainstream, just do whatever you like!