Sincerely Yours, Hadi Falapishi
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At once deeply sincere and totally kidding, artist Hadi Falapishi isn’t afraid to play the clown in his paintings, performances, and sculptures if it gives him permission to share universal truths. Embracing contradictions, Falapishi juxtaposes the charmingly childlike with the expertly crafted as he moves between the creation of cartoonish paintings and meticulous self-portraits in his studio. “It tries to resist this desire from society to see you as one, to frame you as one,” says the artist. “I don’t want to be that.” This documentary short follows Falapishi as he works in his Brooklyn studio exploring the tensions between comedy and critique.
Credits
Director & Producer: Lydia Cornett. Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Editor: Lydia Cornett, Brian Redondo. Cinematography: Bradley Credit. Additional Cinematography: Lindsay Jackson. Assistant Cameras: Asia Li, Indi Aufranc. Gaffer: Réal Gill. Sound: Brit Fryer, Caroline May. Associate Producer: Andrea Chung. Assistant Curator: Jurrell Lewis. Color Correction: Cédric von Niederhäusern. Sound Design & Mix: Micah Garrido. Design & Graphics: Andy Cahill, Chips. Music: Simon Berggren, A Carousing Consort, Francesco DAndrea, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Martin Puehringer, Sean Nicholas Savage, Sémø. Assistant Editor: Michelle Hanks
Artwork Courtesy: Hadi Falapishi, Andrew Kreps Gallery
Thanks: Art&Newport, Kylen & China, Phoebe Derlee, Joe Fusaro, Miranda Holmes, Dodie Kazanjian, Connor Kreagan, César Martínez Barba, Kevin O’Leary, Preservation Society of Newport County, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Masha Vlasova
New York Close Up is made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Henry Nias Foundation, and individual contributors.
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Hadi Falapishi was born in 1987 in Tehran, Iran and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist received his MFA from Bard College in 2016. Falapishi’s work playfully subverts our most basic assumptions about power dynamics, identity, and the role of the artist by humorously revealing the fragility of our social order. Spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance, the artist’s practice blurs the lines between high and low culture, the handcrafted and the store-bought, the artist and the clown.
“I like to imagine is that everything I make in the studio, it comes to life. It gives that soul to it when it’s on display to the public.”
Hadi Falapishi