Cardi Black Box – Shirana Shahbazi exhibition. A new art gallery, Cardi Black Box opens to the public and launches its presence on the contemporary art scene with an exhibition dedicated to Iranian-German artist Shirana Shahbazi, at her first solo show in Italy. Seen here with her husband, graphic designer, Manuel Krebs, Shahbazi was born in Teheran in 1974, she moved to Europe at a young age, and now lives and works in Zurich. The gallery was born out of a project by gallerist, Nicolo Cardi and it has prestigious young partners; Barbara Berlusconi, daughter of the Italian Prime Minister and Martina Mondadori of the publishing house. The entrepreneurial, Cardi, has a background in business applied to art, chose as his artistic director Sarah Cosulich Canarutto, who has a long-standing experience in international institutions. This young team, with clear ideas believes that they can offer recognition to the art historical value of the proposed artists, regardless of provenance and age, in the conviction that a private commercial space can present museum quality exhibitions.
Cardi Black Box – Shirana Shahbazi exhibition. The Shirana Shahbazi exhibition, until April 4th, curated by Sarah Cosulich Canarutto, presents a selection of about twenty five recent and unpublished works. An array of photographs but also paintings and carpets that compose an installation, a space where the seductive power of the images becomes an opportunity to trigger a new reading of reality from the part of the viewer. Shahbazi works primarily with photography, a medium whose full potential she widely explores, pushing its boundaries by carrying it onto other media, such as painting, printmaking and objects. Still life is a recurring theme and one of the most important elements in her artistic practice but the artist also measures with other picture genres, such as portrait, landscape and history painting, establishing an interesting and deep culture-crossing relationship which questions the dichotomy between modernity and tradition, epic and ordinary.
