Sincerely Yours, Hadi Falapishi | Art21 "New York Close Up"

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Can I sit here?

Nice day, no?

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You want one?

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I think if you tell your parents,

I want to be a clown,

there is that quality of, oh no.

Is it possible that's also the case with

an artist

like, oh no, don't go that direction.

There is this risk of if your work is

funny or humorous, people don't take it

seriously.

Forget about a serious artist,

they don't even think you're an artist,

they think you're a clown, you know?

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So I think that's the kind of fear that I

at some point I recognized

that maybe it was stopping me from what I

wanted to do.

So I was like, what will happen if I'm

also the clown? As an artist, you can't

escape not pointing the camera or the

finger at yourself. So I try to exaggerate

that aspect, so then I will be allowed to

also exaggerate everything else about the

society.

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By doing that, I hope it'll allow the work

to be seen as not myself, but what's

surrounding me, the spectators of this

circus. (music)

I love that tension of who gets to tell

more truths, is it a clown in a circus who

can criticize a society or a serious

artist, let's say or a serious politician?

(music)

When you come to my studio, there are very

distinct, different works existing next to

each other. One thing about the realistic

painting is that it takes longer time,

it's more labor intensive, in

contradiction to this very quick stage of

the cartoonish work. They are living on

two different stages, extremely slow,

extremely fast, extremely detailed,

extremely undefiled, extremely skilled,

and very de-skilled version of them in

the cartoonish form. That kind of analogy

has found its way all over my work.

There is always this sense of two things

contradicting each other. There is two

energy, there is clash of two totally

different things resisting against each

other, and that's how the affect of what

I'm producing is made. It kind of tries to

resist this to this, maybe desire from the

society to see you as one, to frame you as

one. And I don't want to be that. (music)

In 2008, I was living in Iran, my path was

on another route. (spray gun hissing)

When I was growing up in Tehran, with the

educational system I had gone through,

there are limitations, you know?

What can you be, what can you do, you

know? Almost like just be happy with what

you are given. I was supposed to be an

aerospace engineer and I remember I fell

in love with cinema and with filmmaking.

The Iranian filmmakers that I would think

about, I had imagined, like, how the

directors are writing and coming up with

the stories, telling the stories of us

back to us. (music)

I realized, oh my god, there is a world

even more free than filmmaking which is

the visual art. And I knew at that point

that I'm going to be a visual artist. Do

you want? Here. Lemme just do it for you.

(lighter flicking)

What I like to imagine is that everything

I make in the studio, it comes to life. It

give like that soul to it when it's on

display to the public. Oh, this is bad.

Oh, this is bad. It's bad for your health

too. (soft music)

The Breakers is one of the grandest

mansions of Newport. It has been turned

to a museum and it's the first time a

contemporary exhibition is being set up

inside. (soft music)

I pick the head, I will ask you to hold it

or any one of you guys that are there. You

will hold it, I will have my hammer.

-So once he puts

-Yes - the pieces down, then we go out and

get the food. -Exactly. -Exactly. -The

people you have been serving, you just

come between them and you will use your

flashlight. It's totally fine to suddenly

sit down and look under the table or look

at the elephant. -Okay. We're looking for

something. -Yeah, searching for

something. Exactly. A lot of my

performance have this sense of like a

dream scenario. Things being tiny bit

funny, and things being tiny bit sad or

out of place. You want to laugh at it and

you might feel bad by laughing at the

artist. I like that confusion of, hey,

what's going on? Forcing everyone present

in the room to take on a role of

performing as part of the night. Dinner is

something always happens at the

exhibitions after opening, and I wanted

that dinner actually to be the center part

of the exhibition. I have made a ceramic

head shape of every guest with their face

on it, to turn their heads into plate and

bowl for the night. I'm gonna break the

guests' heads. It's time to give it up

(hammer clanging)

It just feels like wind

It'll put all of them to do something

that maybe they weren't expecting to be

doing, you know? (people chattering)

-(Hadi) As much as a critique of society,

the critique of the art world, it's a

of the artist, meaning myself too. I'm

always also the butt of the joke, you

know? (soft music) When you're in public,

you are taking chances of people acting or

responding in a way that you had not

imagined. - Can I be in the movie?

-Sure, you can.

Looks like him, no?

Do you wanna have this one? -Mm-hmm.

(bright music)

-(Hadi) Bye.

It kind of frees you, allowing chance to

play a role. It allows for that de-skilled

-ness, for that imperfection to reappear

again. (bright music)