Rosenfeld Porcini is proud to present ‘Painting’, a solo exhibition of Iranian painter Mehran Elminia’s most recent works. The gallery will showcase oil paintings on canvas of varying dimensions. This exhibition follows on from Elminia’s 2012 inaugural UK exhibition ‘Revealing Harmonies’.

Mehran Elminia is a painter in the purest sense of the word. His artistic search is not to comment on politics, psychology, sociology, religion or human relationships. He is interested in exploring the language of painting as an end unto itself. This purity of intent connects him to the world of American abstract expressionism whose critic philosopher, Clement Greenberg, drew attention to the fact that renouncing narrative liberated the language of painting to be of itself without the need for anything else. The first cubisms of Picasso and Braque were also essentially concerned with language and revolutionising the picture plane, but there was still a narrative to be portrayed; the same could be said for literature, where within the experimental language of James Joyce in ‘Finnegans Wake’ there is still a story being recounted.

The connection between Joyce and Mehran Elminia goes further; both use their stream of consciousness to arrive at a certain level of spontaneity through thoughts and words, or as in Elminia's case, marks and gestures. Capable of working almost 24 hours without a break, he strives to reach a state of total oneness with the painting where nothing is premeditated and everything is consumed in a seamless continuum of successive moments. In fact, the energy and visceral quality of Elminia’s compositions can be directly related to this approach.

Of course simply to arrive at a pure spontaneity is no guarantee of the quality of an artist, quite the opposite in fact. Mehran Elminia, however, is both a great colourist and possesses a natural sense of composition. His works, with their great complexity, never appear as the fruit of a purely spontaneous working method on the contrary they have a classically considered coherence; this may well be one of his greatest achievements as an artist and certainly a testament to his unique qualities: The ability to develop his very own pictorial language which, on first impressions, belies his working method.

For a painter to find his own original approach is the most arduous thing of all when one considers the history of art. Notwithstanding his best intentions, Mehran Elminia also discovers at the termination of a work, as he steps back and emerges from his trance like state, that his finished painting contains various figurative elements; his complete unawareness of the fact is testimony to the uniqueness of his process.

Mehran Elminia was born in Tabiz (Iran) in 1975. He obtained his masters in art from Rome University of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Iran. Elminia has exhibited with several galleries and art fairs in Italy including Rome International Art Fair and Milan International Art Fair along with solo exhibitions in Iran. He has further contributed to group exhibitions in Dubai and Rome and was featured in the 2010 Biennale of Contemporary Religious Art, Stauròs Museum, Italy. This will be his second solo UK exhibition.