Aabee Bleue Project is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Ardeshir Tabrizi. This is the first time the gallery is showing his work. The exhibition brings together seven paintings from the “Rise” series and will be on view from March 28 through April 25.

The work deals with the human body and life and death. These are broad terms, but right now they feel very specific. The artist’s father is going through lung cancer, someone he is very close to. Because of that, these questions and feelings are very present in his life. Day to day, watching what his father is going through brings them forward. This experience shapes much of the work, which engages deeply with the body and its vulnerability.

At the same time, themes that have always existed in his work remain: human history and how people fit into it, and their place in the present moment within contemporary society. Tabrizi often uses motifs, sometimes Persian, sometimes drawn from Persian and Indian miniatures. These long-standing interests form a kind of through line in the work, connecting past and present, personal and collective.

What makes this body of work different is the presence of his current personal experience. That, together with these older interests, shapes the paintings. Many of the pieces have central figures. In the “Rise” piece, there is a small nod to the surrealist painter René Magritte, with figures floating upward into another space—a kind of transition. These layered spaces feel both intimate and open, inviting the viewer to move through them and reflect on what they see.

Tabrizi does not describe himself as religious, nor deeply spiritual, but rather as a humanist. His work looks at how people shape and are shaped by the world, and how the world shapes and is shaped by them. This includes history, where we come from, and the weight of family, as well as the place of the individual in society.