Soheyl Moradpour is one of the artists who has been active and productive in the art scene during the last decade and, after returning to the country and has held several high-profile exhibitions and conferences. His recent exhibition, held at Ariana gallery, is continuation of the style that he has used in the past years.
The main works displayed in the exhibition can fit into two categories “Bahram Yasht” and “Aban Yasht.” The base of the paintings is all paint and oil on canvas, and the theme of most of them is a vessel that has been broken and riveted and has a design on it. Some of these paintings depict Bahram and inspired by verses in Aban Yasht. However, in the latter ancient hymns we do not have a precise and explicit categorization of the connection of animals and symbols with Venus, as we see in Bahram Yasht.
One of the remarkable features of the Avestan deities is their association with plant and animal symbols. A similar pattern can be seen in the mythologies of other civilizations. But the method of connecting sacred forces with natural signs is very systematic and regular in Iranian traditions, in a way that we do not see its like in other parts of the world. The fact that, for example, Greek Zeus is related to lightning (a natural symbol) or Egyptian Sobek is associated with a crocodile (an animal symbol) is a pervasive thing that we see in all cultures. But the fact that a Yazidi like Bahram communicates with a wide range of natural phenomena and simultaneously is independent of all of them is different and shows a distinct level of complexity in the encoding of mythology.
For the ancient Egyptians, all crocodiles were a sign of Sobek, and that’s why when they presented a crocodile mummy to Sobek’s temple, they raised a part of their god’s body ritually and offered it to him. In the same way, gods representing the storm, such as the Vedic Indra, the Babylonian Marduk, the Greek Zeus, and the Roman Jupiter, were considered equal to the atmospheric phenomena of the storm and lightning. Such patterns are prevalent in old Avesta and Vedic mythology. For example, “Vay” is similar to wind, and “Haoma” is identical to a type of plant, and this shows that the ancient Aryan tradition, like the rest of the world, considered gods to be manifestations of a specific and limited natural phenomenon.
With the beginning of the Zoroastrian revolution and the emergence of the first philosophical system and the first moral system, all ancient gods were exiled from heaven like false demons, and a single and abstract God took the place of all of them, who was both wholly moral and rational. This sacred being (Ahura) which was equal to wisdom (Mazda), gradually reabsorbed some ancient Aryan gods into its conceptual body. But this time, they were considered as manifestation of morality in natural rationing. As a result, the limited and singular representations of the past were abandoned, and each reconstructed ancient god was recreated as a sensual force in man and as an abstract thing and connected with a wide range of phenomena. In this way, a much more complex cipher was formed, which we see in the yachts and its artistic representation in the works of Soheyl Moradpour.
For example, during the pre-Zoroastrian era, the Aryans living in Eastern Iran had a deity called Indra, the equivalent of the storm. They were revered for bringing rain-making winds and fighting the drought demon (Wrathrah). This deity has the title of “Verethragna,” which means “killer of wartra” and refers to this battle. In the post-Zoroastrian period, Indre was rejected from the circle of sacred affairs as a false and evil demon, and has remained in the Pahlavi sources as andardiv, the son of Ahriman. However, his title was absorbed into the Zoroastrian religion, and he was considered an independent and warrior god created by Ahuramazda and fought against evil forces. This reconstructed form of Indra is Bahram, whose name is a distortion of the ancient Verethragna.
Bahram in bahram Yasht is not with one animal or one natural phenomenon, but represented by 10 different manifestations, such as boar, ram, a horse, a warrior man, and a dagger-wielding teenager. Signs display a complex layering of symbols. I have described in an article that it was a label for different martial styles associated with the warriors and priests of Bahram. This way of connecting the ancient sacred forces is seen in the entire religious beliefs of Zoroastrianism. In all cases, the ancient gods have been found deceptive and false, their fundamental abstract concept extracted, redefined as a force connected to man and crystallized in connection with a network of complex symbols. This is the process that has appeared in Iranian arts. The representation of the sacred has been drawn into highly abstract themes such as geometric shapes, letters, and words on the one hand, and the other hand, it has resulted in categorized coding that we can see in birds (Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr) and body parts (Tab al-Qulob Ibn Qayyim Joziyeh) on the other hand.
In his works, Soheyl Moradpour intends to reconstruct this symbolic system and repeated reference to natural signs that represent abstract but familiar strains of the sacred. The choice of old broken vessels to reflect the image of these symbols is clever. Because the motifs drawn on pottery and vessels were the most important means of conveying meaning and representing symbolic systems before the appearance of calligraphy, it still maintains its expression and media function.
Sohail Moradpour is still young, active, and prolific, and he is busy paving the way in which he will naturally advance, and other skilled artists will also get this call and discover and follow this new path. It needs to be clarified what exactly he will get from this migration. But exhibitions like the one we saw in Ariana encourage us that good news is coming.
