VICIOUS INSENSITIVITY

Anaesthesia is a word that has originated from Greek. In its literal sense it means a lack of feeling. Can we call the view of an Afghan artist who was born in the Iranian city of Zahedan, impartial? At the age of 27 he hadgraduated from the Tehran School of Fine Arts in 2005, and then the Azerbaijan State Academy of Arts in 2012.

He probably finds it more comfortable to live and carry on his art here where the traditions of the Eastern and European schools of fine arts have enriched and supplemented each other for several centuries. 

Having grown up in countries with Islamic traditions, he is trying to re-interpret the world of the 21st century, which is increasingly frequently shocking human awareness of different kinds with insinuations aimed at undermining the moral values developed by humankind over the centuries. At the moment, this artist of Afghan origin, Reza Hazare, is having a solo exhibition at the "YAY" Gallery in Baku.

The genre in which Reza Hazare works is conceptual painting. In the main, the subject is expressed using the techniques of oriental miniatures, where the space has no perspective;the subject is expressed in sign-like symbols, the interaction of the characters revealing their attitudes to the event. The 21st centuryis the time of the conceptualist painter. Today realist painting owes a debt to the European tradition of the past. Increasingly few authors wish to express their attitude to the world in this genre. The idea of attitude, the idea of assessment, the idea of protest is increasingly being expressed in symbols and metaphors. This gives the viewer room for imagination and the possibility of reading from it what is troubling the author.

Reza Hazare's conceptual view of 21st-century problems is linked to a reinterpretation of those moral directives that he received in the process of coming into being himself. This is precisely how the author's ideas can be "read". In the world that he has been very familiar with since his childhood, everything was in its customary places: men, women, old people and children. Each had his own destiny in life and his obligations. But there were always underwater currents and double standards, slyness and temptation by vices in this customary world. There are many aspects to the world of humans!

So that men did not speak about the universe, as theynever spoke about relations between men and women, no matter which ruses they resorted to, as if to curb the unruly mores of the weaker sex; all their own designs, secret and obvious, were linked precisely with the representatives of the female sex! No matter what significance men attributed to all that controls them in the sub lunar world, women occupy a big part of their lives. And this is how it has always been. The 21st century has intruded into that sphere of human everyday life, considerably moving the accent to the side of these positions, which throughout the ages have been considered a sin, namely single-sex marriage and relations.

Men's World

"Anaesthesia No. 4"

So, two wise men from the East are having a lively conversation. What are they talking about? The clothing and age of the personages suggests the seriousness of the moment, the importance of the issues being resolved. But what do their designs and instincts conceal? Temptation. Temptation to a sin of the flesh. There is something impure, something casting a spell, lingering in the awareness of one of them, which a true believer would shun as something evil! The nature of the second character is already captivated by this pleasurable phantasy. Their age does not allow them to recognise their moral downfall even on the level of wishful thinking! Therefore they have no pupils in their eyes. Their eye-sockets no longer allow us to see into their soul. But their thoughts are longing for a woman! Naturally these are sinful thoughts. But this sin is a customary sin.

"Anaesthesia No.1". 

There are two men. They are well aware of what they are doing and on what their thoughts and desires are concentrated. A half grin, an unkind beast-like look, instead of fingers claws ready to pounce. The figure of a woman can be seen sitting behind their backs. She is headless. But she has a body with bulging shapes which are hidden by the stripes in the fabric. This is how Egyptian mummies are swaddled. The lust of these men with their well-developed instinct to seize something is not directed towards anything in particular. It simply lives within them. There behind the back of their heads there is yet another male head. We can only presuppose who it belongs to! Men and women have a selection of chromosomes. These are the building blocks of a new life. But the chromosomes are undergoing some kind of restructuring. What kind is it? What will go out into the world as a result of these contacts? And who is responsible for that? A man's attitude to a woman, like his attitude to goods forms a new spiral in the throng of human sins in the first century of the millennium century.

"Anaesthesia No. 10"

Full height at the front of the picture are two male figures, their heads together, but one of these figures has split into two and forms a kind of iconostasis with a double standard in vital aspirations. The sporty stretched-out figure has two bodies, two heads and two faces. This is one and the same man. But one side of him is for everybody and the other for his friend. What does this mean? This is a tribute to the fashionable single-sex trend or the authors protest against the trend taking root. In the background a woman is leaving with her back to the viewer.

There is no fetching gracefulness in her figure, no attractive beauty. She is just one of many, a plain woman in the crowd. The woman's head lies in the left-hand corner in the foreground. The traits of her face are by no means perfect, but there is that exquisiteness about them that makes a woman a woman. The long slim neck looks similar to the material from which dice are made. A woman's neck, but a man's head. They are interconnected. But how do the dice fall in the game called life? The selection of chromosomes by useless coupling depends on the air. The female and male sexes have started not to cross with one another. A problem that no-one wants to acknowledge. And perhaps most of the responsibility for the degeneration of traditional views regarding the structure of the sexes lies with the women, for all that? For she is the one who does not want to see what is going on around her, for she does not have pupils through which it would be possible to look into her soul, her own and that of her husband who could be by her side. In the top right-hand corner there are strangers looking on, men and women. This is society. What it has long been customary to call a substitution of the true values is occurring with their silent consent. But this is the way it has always been throughout time. Terrible crimes have been occurring in the world with the silent consent of those whose voice could have been heard.

The World of Women

"Anaesthesia No. 12"

A woman in a dark blue dress is depressed and confused. Her pose with her right hand pressed to her breast, her dark eyes downcast, devoid of pupils, point to the fact that two people standing behind her back are tempting her. Each in his own way. One of them is sinister and infernal (literally a reference to "hell" or "filth"]. He looks like the devil. The other is a macho seducer. They have one and the same aim. And it looks like it will be achieved. There is no third one for the woman. There is no light. There are no alternatives. Here it is the terrible reality from which there is no escape. All the same, the woman will not be able to avoid moral downfall. The world of men leaves her no choice…

Flight into apathy

Two hovering figures can be seen against a vivid pink background. They are ugly and clumsy. There is none of the alluring magnetism that makes you turn and look without breaking off what you are doing. They do not possess that inner beauty which makes you forget their imperfect appearance. The eyes do not express anything except dismal anguish. Indian ink is dripping from the eyelashes, giving them an even more dramatic and aloof appearance. There are neither desires, nor hopes nor strivings. There's no room for love, nor is there any desire for it. They do not need men. They are not even interested in each other. Spiritual emptiness may be destructive!

"Anaesthesia No. 9"

There are two women who have long been acquainted. One is wearing a dress and the other leggings and a T-shirt. They both have problems. They obviously have friendly feelings towards each other. Both of them are downtrodden, unkempt, ugly, weighted down by problems. Loneliness, inner emptiness, no fondness for the life they have, the inescapability, restricted by hatred. This is all that fate has "given" them. There is no man in their life. He may simply have fallen by the wayside. He may be the reason for their intense dialogue. There it is - the world of infantile men and courageous women! Is anything likely to change? There behind their back there is a green sprouting tree.The tree is like a symbol of life, of the life that still might happen… 

The Family

"Anaesthesia No. 8"

Among the works at Reza Hazare's exhibition there is only one work where the man and woman look like a family. It looks like it because they are together, because they are sharing life. And in it everything is shared: the joy, the cares and the sadness, the ability to listen, understanding that there is a person at their side, just like you yourself, only another person! They are walking along as if they are listening to the world about them. Not a very simple world, a world "bristling" with wars, chaos and insinuations. It is a world that is overturning spiritual values, substituting false ones for them, becoming confused,and a muddled world, upon which reverted ideals of pseudo freedoms have been thrust.

Saddled with the awareness of the destructive nature of the ideals of lack of obligation in marriage between females and males, mankind is falling into the abyss, dooming itself to genetic degeneration. A man and a woman can save this world. Because there can only be this exchange of chromosomes when there is this distribution of the sexes which is the code for the genetic continuation of the human race… 

The anaesthesia of the artist Reza Hazare is not a way of making the viewer insensitive. On the contrary, in casting his characters in the light, deprived of attractiveness, his is stressing the thoughtthat physical and spiritual beauty, once it has left the world, loses its chance of salvation, The unattractive world of human disconnection, the vices that have long ceased to be covert ones and have long been raised to virtuous merits, covered up by idle talk of sexual rights for minorities, are leading down the fatal path to self-extermination…