Raha Gallery to prepared international activities/ Atefeh Fattahipour : international artist coming to tehran
TEHRAN. (Iranart) - Raha gallery, which received its license from the Culture Ministry back in 2015, plans to purposefully and differently make its way through artland in order to get where it wants to go - wherever that may be.
Curator Atefeh Fattahipour says the art community is familiar with her gallery through exhibitions: “Long before its establishment, the main focus for the gallery’s management was to provide support for Iranian art and artist, facilitate their presence in international auctions and art shows, and ultimately sell their works in established art venues.”
She goes on to state that after three years the gallery plans to change course in a bid to help extend the reach of Iranian art in international venues: “We will continue to hold exhibitions for our A-list artists. But we have no intention to compete with other Iranian galleries. We just want to be different; more like a museum-gallery. For instance, we plan to organize art shows for our A-listers abroad in order to provide valuable experience and feedback.”
According to Fattahipour, another missing link in the Iranian art is the absence of quality content: “There are few critical reviews written about our A-listers in English or Persian languages. We plan to change that; we will take the necessary steps to this end as well.”
Elsewhere in her remarks, the curator of Raha Gallery talked about the greater benefit of getting out there and being seen, in addition to becoming known: “We have been studying and planning for some time to interact constantly with the international community in visual arts. We will organize art shows for the internationally-recognized artists and old masters. We will organize workshops for them in Iran. It’s a perfect way to update and contemporize our artists. They can get involved and show they are serious about becoming successful as an artist and committed to doing whatever is necessary to achieve that end.“
According to Fattahipour, Raha Gallery has been doing just that for some time now - by purchasing artworks from the region: “The subject matter of art market has become so serious in the Middle East since 2008. As astounding as this may seem, the squabble is that Iranian gallery owners expect to sell their art collections in this particular market but don’t want to buy any regional work. Guess what? We have changed that; we have purchased works created by other regional artists. This way we wanted to show them that this particular market is a two-way street.”
In conclusion, Fattahipour said there's a structure and order to the art world, and over the past decade the business has been booming in the Iranian market: “For this reason and no other, we have to pay closer attention to the promotion of other aspects of the art. It’s a lose-lose situation in the long-run when you pay attention to just one side of the business at the expense of other aspects. Our future focus will be on offering professional art works, active marketing, effective advertising, and content production in both English and Persian. Failure to do so will hinder sustainable development and growth in the Iranian art market. Raha Gallery has come the market to achieve that end.”