Shahin Afrassiabi • FRANCIS Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2023-2025
The exhibition FRANCIS brings together more than seventy works by Shahin Afrassiabi produced between 2023 and 2025. The installation appears dense and layered, with images overlapping and forming clusters rather than a single focal point. All works return to an iconic 1971 photograph of Francis Bacon in his studio, taken by Francis Goodman. From this starting image emerge heads, fragments and abstract translations of details from the studio environment. The familiar figure of Bacon appears repeatedly, surrounded by shifting fields of colour and matter. The exhibition gathers these variations into one continuous spatial arrangement.
I sensed from the beginning… that it could be rich with possibilities resonant for painting.Shahin Afrassiabi
The series begins with a single, widely recognised photograph. Afrassiabi does not treat it as a portrait to reproduce. It acts as a trigger for a chain of painterly shifts. Each work carries a memory of the original while moving away from it. The image becomes an open structure that keeps generating new forms. A fixed motif starts to expand.
Alongside the heads, other works grow out of details of the studio. Surfaces and fragments become independent pictorial spaces. A face can dissolve into a field, and a field can suggest a figure. Recognition never fully disappears but it never stabilises. The works move between suggestion and abstraction. Figuration and abstraction remain in constant exchange.
Shahin Afrassiabi, Untitled (Variation), 2023-2025 • Oil on canvas, 195 x 180 cm
Although the motif returns, no image is identical. Small shifts in colour and gesture alter the emotional tone each time. The familiar begins to slip. Repetition does not confirm the image but unsettles it. Each version tests the limits of the original. Meaning appears through difference.
The final image emerges from chaos… I want to embrace the sense of discovery and surprise.
The works develop slowly through layers and revisions. Earlier decisions remain visible beneath the surface. The result is not predetermined. Control and accident coexist. Each image records traces of its own making. The process stays active within the finished work.
The installation avoids a central focal point. Large and small works stand in close proximity. Images respond to each other across the room. Relationships emerge through movement and comparison. The exhibition unfolds as a continuous field rather than a sequence. The viewer’s gaze remains in motion.
Bacon… becomes everyman… a vehicle of infinite permutations of expression.
By returning to Bacon again and again, the figure becomes material in itself. The portrait turns into a way of thinking about painting. The famous image loses its fixed identity and becomes a flexible sign. Repetition carries a quiet humour. The works reflect on the conditions of the image while remaining open.
Despite its engagement with a historical figure, the series is not reverential. Afrassiabi describes laughter as a constant presence while making the work. This attitude shifts how Bacon appears. The figure is not treated as a monument but as a moving image. Humour becomes part of the method. The works hold seriousness and absurdity at the same time.
Laughter plays a huge part in my approach… It was non-stop comedy.
Shahin Afrassiabi (b. 1963 in Tehran, IR) holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London. He lives and works in Granada and London.
