Sépànd Danesh

Artiste
NÉ EN 1984 à Téhéran en Iran
Vit et travaille à Paris

« My artistic approach develops tools highlighting the perpetual movement of thought, its paradoxes, its connections and the richness of its variability. I develop precise protocols that can be viewed as experiments produced by the human brain.

Amongst these protocols, drawing allows me to fragment ideas through a grid by sampling each reflection into a sketch. Juxtaposed with other similar thoughts, it becomes a codex or an eclectic set of creative moments. Being at the source of all my projects, this cognitive exercise functions as a notebook.

Painting and trompe-l’oeil techniques lead me to design heuristic spaces that aim to provoke the viewer. My canvases are always composed of a corner without floor or ceiling, like a vertical fold in the wall suggesting a depth. Inside this exploration space, I place objects with omniscient appearances, extracted from my personal memory and from a wider memory taken in my historical and artistic environment. The corner encloses and prevents the momentum of the body in its progression and movement, forcing the spirit to escape through imagination and creativity. My paintings thus offer the viewer a cognitive dialectic of prevention and escape.

Alternatively, I create sequences of variations in volume, stemming from the same fragment – a cube or a pixel in volume, which it can also be called a ‘voxel’. Assemblages or combinations invented this way produce postures, inducing a lingering desire for expression, to the point that one would be deceived by the illusion of their movement. An illusion accentuated by the interplay of shadows and painted lights, giving a digital aspect to sculptures and getting spectators off the beaten track, inviting them to interact with their environment.

Academic research helps me updating my creative process and finding new lines of study. Observing the evolution of our thinking systems included the following past initiatives:

• a research project on urban grids in post-modern cities (funded by the CNAP from 2017 to 2019 as part of a research and creation support program)

• an initiation of a research program (Hubtopia) gathering artists and researchers around the problematic of the Hub

• an implementation of my drawing protocol as part of a connected pen project in partnership with researchers and philosophers in cognitive science and network science

From my first drawings to my current projects in cognitive science, I strive to highlight the beauty of human thought. The works I propose to the public give an opportunity for everyone to get a grasp of their cognitive processes. I firmly believe in one important thing: artists have the responsibility to reveal to society the relationship between individuals and their environment. Why not propose new ways to reveal ourselves to ourselves, using the entirety of our potential? Therefore a question arises: which predictions could we make about the evolution of human thinking within the realm of the digital age ? »

 Texte de Sépànd Danesh

Site de l’artiste :
https://www.sepanddanesh.com/