Reihaneh Hosseini

Born and raised in Tehran, Hosseini studied philosophy before emigrating to Vienna in 2014, where she currently resides. Trained under Austrian abstract artists including Christian Schwarzwald and Gunter Damisch, Reihaneh soon returned to figurative painting, her favored style for reflecting on the world that surrounds her. As a storyteller, she is inspired by her friends and her everyday life experiences, yet she portrays them with a dysmorphic rendition, exaggerated proportions, grotesque, and distorted features, and an incongruous palette.

Her strong sense of corporeality coupled with the absurdity of the scenes that she depicts reveal a psycho-emotional approach to life and painting. The figures that populate her works oscillate between beauty and ugliness, they have a cartoonish appearance that adds a glimpse of humor and playfulness to her compositions, yet they are imbued with philosophical subtleties. Hosseini’s paintings take us to a dreamlike world where each of her characters evokes our unconscious thoughts, our inner child, as well as our mental and social imagery.