Amir Salamat • Bio

Amir Salamat was born in Tehran to a large, loving and artistic family.   The youngest of five children, Amir had dreamed of studying art and music, but his family--consistent with the mores of proper Persian society at the time--had plans for him to become something more sensible like a doctor, engineer or an architect like his older siblings.    However, art and appreciation for art in the form of books, paintings and ceramics were all over the Salamat household, which fueled his interests.   In spite of the fact that he was accepted to Alborz, (The highly competitive and prestigious boy's high school, known for producing Iran's best scientists and engineers) with a calculator in one hand, he took a brush in the other, and started painting at the age of 15.

His early paintings were in the surrealistic style, highly influenced by Salvador Dali. During the next few years, he privately studied the works of painters such as Miro, Klee, Picasso, and the impressionists. While maintaining a certain surrealistic approach, his work became more linear with brighter colors. His paintings started to show the influence of such painters as Hundretwasser and Modigliani. Using other mediums along with oils, such as pastels, watercolor and acrylic Amir became influenced by the works by Jackson Pollack, Basquiat and keith Haring as evident in his most recent work, typically on board using latex and oil paint.

Immediately prior to the 1979 Revolution and subsequent ousting of the Shah from Iran, Amir and a group of friends from Aryamehr University (now called Sharif) were able to secure student visas for the US and escape the fate that would befall the rest of his country, and force it into an Islamic Republic where artistic freedom would be limited.   Amir attended University on the west Coast from San Diego to Portland where he dutifully finished his Bachelors and then his Masters in Structural Engineering, before Settling in the Bay Area, where he still lives with his two children.

Several factors may have ignited the imagery prevalent in this artist's work. It may have been just a case of prolonged home-sickness, or his Iranian up-bringing juxtaposed so closely with the liassez-faire Haight-Ashbury of the 70's recovering from the Vietnam War.   By contrast, leading up to the Ayatollah's oppressive regime and subsequent   hostage crisis, people in Iran were gearing up for war, while Iranian ex-patriots living in the US, were often unfairly held liable for the actions of their government.   In the US at that difficult time in history, Iranians were often treated with a disdain and suspicion that could be wounding to the psyche of a young man more eager to learn English, and fathom American pop-culture, than to defend Islamic doctrine versus the historic ramifications of the Western pursuit of oil. Or perhaps it was simply a manifestation of the oppression any artist would feel at having to eek out a living as an engineer, when what he really yearns to do is paint.

Due to any of these factors--and perhaps a combination of all--by the 1980's, Amir Salamat's body of work began to take on a distinctive middle-eastern flavor that repeatedly used symbolism and religious imagery such as Mullahs, faceless veiled women, crosses and other Judeo-Christian metaphors to tell his story. Mosques, minarets, shadowy figures, skulls and arrows are other frequent visitors in the artist's composition.   Bold colors, the theme of the anonymous woman, skulls and simplified mouth-less faces carry over to his present work at times interspersed with Latin and Persian script clearly thrown in for creative measure, as they are often random and sometimes indecipherable. However, the tongue-in-cheek religious zealotry now and again belies a sense of humor, so piercing, almost discordant in it's presence that it forces a second and third look.

Perhaps the one example betraying the mind of an engineer fused with that of an artist, is the recurring theme of chaos, based on the science.   The "Theory of Chaos" champions the belief that one small and seemingly insignificant thing can have a colossal effect on the world like the fluttering of a butterfly's wings that can--through a series of repercussions--cause a storm.   Visible at first glance in the artist's newer work, the unruliness of chaos is represented by syncopated lines, shapes and color.   However, there are always small enclaves of order within the composition in terms of balance, at first lost in the confusion, then suddenly visible and strangely reassuring.    As the science confirms, chaos can lurk behind a façade of order and yet deep inside the chaos lurks a type of order.   Both the science and the art it inspires, offer a new way of seeing patterns where formerly only the random was observed.