Ghodratollah Agheli

Ghadratollah Agheli, a sculptor, was born in Jolfa. He started his artistic education at the boys' visual art school. Years later, he received a first-class badge from the country's Council of Evaluation of Artists and Writers. He was the founder and editor of the comprehensive specialized research website of Iran Mojassameh. He was the secretary of the Iranian Sculpture Artists Association in the seventh period. Agheli has exhibited his sculptures in more than 222 group exhibitions in Iran, France, Morocco, England, Dubai, and Ukraine and has held twenty-seven solo exhibitions in the country. The artist participated in the Venice Biennale in 2015, and a year later, he appeared at the Beijing Biennale. Some of his sculptures are kept in art centers such as the Isfahan Museum of Contemporary Art, Abadan Museum of Contemporary Art, House of Iranian Artists, and Art Academy. He has also been active in art research and has authored several articles, among which we can refer to the articles "One Hundred Years of New World Sculpture," "Research on the Origins of Carpet Patterns," "Collection of Islamic Patterns," etc. Agheli's sculptures have been collected in a book titled "Shadow in the Wind" and published. In the introduction of this book, Javad Mojabi writes about the different artistic periods of Agheli: "At the beginning of his activity, the young artist, influenced by the surrounding conditions and common cultural/social ideas, pays attention to the indigenous art and national heritage. Moreover, in creating visual works, he tries to keep an eye on the achievements of his predecessors and sculpting artists, and this method is natural at the beginning of his art education." He started creating artworks in 2000 with relatively large colored brass surfaces, which sometimes remind the lines engraved on the metal plate of spells and prayers and ancient motifs of war and goats, and sometimes the reliefs of chickens and inscriptions show the artist's attention to decorative and ritual metalwork. In the next period, the architectural volumes attract his attention, and he goes from the surface to the standing volume. The bronze works displayed in the Jahannama Gallery are a combination of volumes derived from calligraphy and ritual signs and symbols and the ironic structure of Iranian architecture, which in their vertical combinations are reminiscent of the "signs" of mourning ceremonies and the schematics of buildings and religious manifestations. The stimulating effect of Tanavoli sculptures in these works is noticeable. In the collection of birds (2004), the crowding of symbolic and allegorical volumes gives way to the brevity and structural coherence. Although his works are similar to those of Tanavoli and Jazeh Tabatabai, he tries to show his desired feature, freedom and liberation. A form element, bird and cage (a cage inside a bird and a bird out of a cage). In the next exhibition at the House of the Artists, Agheli focuses on his sculptures' structure solidity, away from thematics; the moving form in space and the variety of its dimensions become his main subject. Gradually, he moves away from the domination of his favorite teachers and approaches independent personal expression. In a gap of ten years, from his humble experiences, he reached the Earth and Sky exhibition in 2010, which was the beginning of expressing his individual art. Now, Agheli can be considered a beginner who wants and can objectify his mental world with skill and ease, without lyricism and sentimentality, to approach the primary function of his medium - to impress an attractive volume in space.