Opening Reception: In the Shadows by Fereidoun Ghaffari
Thursday, June 9, 6-8pm
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Please join us for the opening reception for In the Shadows, a solo exhibition by Fereidoun Ghaffari, with curatorial mentorship from Phong Bui. The exhibition presents a series of self-portraits by the artist rendered in thickly layered and textured oil paint, from close ups of his face to full body paintings at scale. The works on view as part of In the Shadows represent only a small portion of Ghaffari’s ongoing series of self-portraits which he began in 2006. In these paintings, in which he is stripped bare of any markers that might suggest a particular culture or time, Ghaffari – who was raised in Iran and is currently based in Brooklyn – resists the politicization of his art. For the artist, painting is “a process of digging into the inner self,” and a quest for intimacy and meaning that is universally human.

Fereidoun Ghaffari was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied painting at the University of Art in Tehran, earning a BFA in 1998 and an MFA in 2002. In 2003, he was accepted as a guest student for a special studies program at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He returned to Tehran in 2004 and taught in universities there until 2006, when he mo]ved to New York and enrolled in the New York Academy of Art, attaining his second MFA in painting in 2008.

In 2013, Ghaffari had a solo show of self-portraits at the Tarahan-Azad Gallery in Tehran. Group exhibitions include EDGE (Emkan Gallery, Tehran – 2018); In Between, Contemporary Iranian Art, curated by Shahram Karimi (MANA Contemporary, Jersey City – 2017); VISAGE: Image of Self, curated by Fereydoun Ave (O Gallery, Tehran – 2016); and SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence, curated by Filippo Fossati (National Museum Academy of Fine Arts, New York – 2015). Awards include a Leslie T. Posey and Frances U. Posey Foundation Grant (Sarasota, Florida – 2008); The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (Montreal, Canada – 2003); and First Prize at the Fifth Biennial of Contemporary Iranian Painting (Tehran – 2000). Ghaffari currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Phong H. Bui is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Publisher/Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail, Rail Editions, River Rail, and Rail Curatorial Projects. He has organized more than sixty exhibitions since 2000, including an ongoing curatorial project called Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, which was exhibited as an official collateral event of the 2019 Venice Biennale Mare Nostrum; at Colby Museum in Waterville, Maine in the exhibition Occupy Colby; and in Singing in Unison, presented in ten galleries and art spaces across New York City in 2022. In 2014, Bui was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” by Brooklyn Magazine, and in 2015, the New York Observer dubbed him a “ringmaster” of the Kings County art world. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Curatorial Advisor at MoMA PS1. He has been a senior critic in the MFA programs at Yale, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania, and has taught graduate seminars in the MFA programs for Writing and Criticism and Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts. 
Bui has received numerous awards, including the Jetté Award for Leadership in the Arts, Colby College Museum of Art (2019); The Lunder Fellowship, The Lunder Institute for American Art (2019); The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Prize in Fine Art Journalism (2017); an honorary doctorate from University of the Arts (2020); and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts (2021). Bui has served on the boards of many organizations, including the International Association of Art Critics (2007-2019), Anthology Film Archives, Artfare, Denniston Hill, Fountain House, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Mildred’s Lane, Monira Foundation, Second Shift Studio Space St. Paul, Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Studio in a School, the Miami Rail (2012-2018), and the Third Rail. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Access Notes
CUE Art Foundation is wheelchair accessible. There is an all-gender, ADA compliant, single-stall bathroom in the gallery. The closest wheelchair-accessible MTA subway stations are Penn Station and Herald Square. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org.