Farhad Nikfam

Born in 1987 | Baku, Azerbaijan


Website
Instagram
info@farhadnikfam.art

Education:
2013 - ongoing: Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts, Theory, Analysis and Criticism of Art PhD
2010: Western University, Graphic Deisgn MFA
2008: Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts, Artist-Designer BA



Farhad Nikfam (b. 1987) is an iranian-azeri painter living & working in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Raised at the crossroads of post-soviet, south caucasian and persian cultures yet influenced by a romanticized image of western world of the 90's and 2000’s, the artist discovers and explores new worlds, where all of these coexis.

Firstly discovered by New American Paintings Magazine at the start of pandemic in 2020, Farhad Nikfam’s paintings depict the space where the artist managed to unite the objective reality and his fantasies - whether it be his own design of a beer bottle he would prefer to drink from or of an armchair he would like to sit on, or fanciful scenarios where only portal for a mermaid to escape an apartment building could be a toilet bowl. Numerous plots embedded in each of the recent paintings are united by a common form - a shelf in a mobile phone store, or a common facade of a building, or a bouquet, but are autonomous per se.

Inspired by the freedom of primitivism in works of Henri Rousseau, as well as by industrial design (his first field of studies), Farhad creates new forms of daily life - angular and naive at the same time. The eye-catching sharpness and directness of lines are combined with the straightforward childlike perception, love for bright colors and non-ergonomic technology objects from the 90s.

In his own words, the artist should live life to the fullest to be able to tell his own story.



Exhibitions:
2022: "PATH" - Dovetail
2022: "196th Annual Exhition" - Royal Scottish Academy
2021: "Healing from Within" - Create Magazine
2021: "Visions" - The Curators
2021: "Life Interrupted" - Art Helix Gallery and TSDAP
2021: "Visions" - The Curators
2020: "Social Distance" - New American Paintings

Publications:
ArtConnect Artists to Watch ’22
Create Magazine issue 32
Broad Magazine Visions issue
Arstin Square issue 3
Contemporary Identities issue 9
Outsider Art Magazine issue 9
Contemporary Art Collerctor’s book by Vera Bertran
Baku Magazine issue 81
Hardedger by Return on Art

Sources:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/farhad-nikfam
https://www.magazine.artconnect.com/farhad-nikfam



2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas

85 x 100 cm



2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas

85 x 100 cm



Transparent bouquet, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
120 x 75 cm




"Message" 2021
Oil, acrylic and latex house paint on canvas
100 x 100 cm




Work N3 from "Flying Carpet" series, 2019
Oil on canvas
85 x 85 cm



Live Flowers, 2019
Oil and acrylic on canvas
80 x 80 cm