'The Breeze At Dawn': Reza Derakshani At Sophia Contemporary.

Reza Derakshani: The Breeze at Dawn, opens this week at Sophia Contemporary Gallery - the first of a schedule of solo exhibitions of his work at prestigious European institutions including The Russian Museum and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Reza Derakshani is one of Iran’s most celebrated living artists. His solo exhibition at Sophia Contemporary Gallery consists of all new works from a number of ongoing series, including the Hunting, Pomegranate and Garden Party series, as well as two large paintings from a new Calligraphy series, which have never previously been exhibited. In May, a large retrospective of the artist’s work will be held in the Marble Palace of The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg surveying the artist’s career to date and including recent works as seen at Sophia Contemporary Gallery this spring. The exhibition will run alongside a solo exhibition of Robert Indiana’s work entitled To the 50th Anniversary of Love, also in the Marble Palace. Following on from this, the works will travel to Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in south east Germany in Autumn. A young prodigy, Reza Derakshani held his first solo show at the age of 19 at the Ghandriz Art Gallery in Tehran, going on to exhibit internationally. His work features in many public art collections including the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Sophia Contemporary is a new gallery showcasing contemporary art of the Middle East and Iran alongside contemporary Western art, founded by Vassili Tsarenkov, Lali Marganiya and Lili Jassemi. The gallery aims to pioneer a new generation of emerging artists from the Middle East and Iran with a view to provide them with a platform on the international stage.