Makan: From Rhythm to Movement
Iranian-American artist presents Collisions, a living archive of the painter's mind.
Photography: Maya Fuhr. Courtesy of the artist.
Hailing from a humble genesis in Los Angeles, Makan has built his way up to great creative heights. He was born in 1990 in the City of Angels to Iranian parents who fled from conservative Iran following its Revolution in the 1980s. After writing and performing music for over a decade, the artist took a different path that ushered him into painting. His constant experimentation, creativity, and strangeness lead him to create “Collisions”, a new series of large-scale paintings held at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station — well-known for displaying early and new figurative works with unique aesthetics.
Inspired by the conscious and subconscious, videos, essays, literature, magazines, music, and films, Makan talks to We The Cool Magazine about his processes and sensorial results prior to the opening of his debut solo show.
Image: Courtesy of the artist.
Karen: Instinctual curiosity plays an important role in your creative process. How do you exercise it?
Makan: I try to nurture it by dimming the input of the part of my mind that's too analytical. I've gotten good at catching myself thinking too much about something and recalibrating accordingly. I think curiosity is always there for everybody, we just end up slamming the brakes on it upon reflection and consideration. So in short, I exercise it by not getting in its way.
K: After writing and performing music for over a decade, what made you transition into painting?
M: I was tired of the lifestyle of being a musician. Lots of moving around, rehearsing, interpersonal politics, staying up late and drinking, etc. Also at the time, I felt tapped out creatively. I was repeating myself and wasn't making anything too exciting. Painting felt new and fresh and it was effortless to just grind at it.
Photography: Maya Fuhr. Courtesy of the artist.
K: Is your Iranian background still present in your work even though you were born and raised in California?
M: The portraits are certainly informed by being a first-generation kid and not feeling a firm sense of belonging to a culture. The traditions that my parents taught me didn't harmonize much with the soil I was raised in, so I suppose I gravitated to individuals for a sense of belonging. The portraits are an expression of gratitude. As far as the influence the aesthetics of Iranian culture had on me, I was looking at some Persian rugs for inspiration for some of the designs in the portraits, specifically "Gabbeh" rugs which are considerably different from what you typically see. Beyond that, I don't think its influence has really baked itself into this set of paintings. At the moment I'm very inspired by Iranian art and Eastern art as a whole and it's something I plan to draw from more for my next projects.
K: What type of ideas and impressions does your art intend to generate in the viewer's mind?
M: It's hard to say as I'd like a full spectrum of impressions to be readily felt by a broad audience. I don't really have any ideas or narratives I want to communicate. I think that sort of broadcasting is best suited for an essay or something, at least for me. I want my paintings to operate in a sensual realm; I want to relay a felt experience and to express those inner movements in me that are pre-conceptualization and pre-narrativizing.
Photography: Maya Fuhr. Courtesy of the artist.
K: What do you consider to be the pros and cons of the current art scene in Los Angeles as a contemporary visual artist?
M: We have a lot of amazing galleries and a lot of great artists in LA. It's easy to get inspired and feel energized by the culture. I can't think of any cons that are specific to LA though! Maybe the traffic and the parking.
K: Is there any other city where you would like to present a project in the near future?
M: I've been hearing a lot of great stuff about Mexico City from all sorts of people. That has certainly piqued my interest.
K: For your upcoming show "Collisions", you present a series of large-scale early and new figurative works at the world-renowned Bergamot Station. Can you tell us more about this exhibition?
M: The exhibition presents two series of works that are meditations of different vantages I've taken: a micro view of my personal life and a macro view of human endeavor. The form the paintings have taken reflect that. The portraits are considerably more ebullient and colorful, whereas the black paintings are more rough and ghastly. I'm still digesting what that says about how I view the world and how I fit into it. Not sure if I'll ever conclusively sort it out. As far as the methods and the initial conceits of the paintings: the portraits were made with the intention of making works that were really textured and tactile. I wanted the paintings to feel alive and buzzing, and I felt the mixed media approach was the right way to achieve that effect. The black paintings are much more crude and immediate and they drew inspiration from the attitude and energy of punk music and stream-of-consciousness novels. I wanted my intuitions to be my guiding force and essentially doubled down on the instinctual curiosity mentioned earlier. Both my works have an energy to them, but of a different kind: with the black paintings, the energy is sourced in the process and attitude, and with the portraits, the energy comes from the weight and heft of all the materials and levels of abstraction mashing into one another.
K: The abstract figures in “Collisions” play an important role in your work catalog. How do you accomplish to make abstract art representational?
M: The difference for me between a shape and a figure is thin. At the end of the day, a face is just a sequence of shapes in relation to one another. Even beyond painting, a song or a noise can carry the same affective content as a scribble or a naturalistically rendered body. They are all drawing from the same amorphous source of sensation. I approach my art from that foundational place. When I was a musician I'd often think about how a painter would make a song, and now that I paint I think about how a painting can feel like a song. The substance is the same, it's just using different languages to express it.
Images: Courtesy of the artist.
K: Is there a special story behind one of your works presented at “Collision” that you would like to share with us?
M: There is a painting I have called "March" which has in it a depiction of the American flag. When I first painted the flag I felt I had entered territory that I'm not really used to, and in many ways worked against the ethos of what the black paintings were about. Flags are so potent with narrative and ideas that I was just kind of stuck for a bit. I knew I wanted a second flag and I knew that it would have to play off the American Flag in a way that made sense to me and what I'm about. So I spent a lot of time thinking which, again, is not the headspace I wanted to be in for these paintings. My friend practices witchcraft and tarot pretty extensively and I came across the tarot card of death. On the card, a grim reaper figure is carrying a flag which is what I ended up choosing. She told me about what the tarot card of death means, which is that it's not about physical death but more about major foundational changes. With the way things are in America in 2022, I thought that that was a very appropriate pairing, not to mention the figures depicted in the painting have an otherworldly, ghastly vibe to them that felt appropriate considering the source.
K: What’s next for MAKAN?
M: More life. I'd like to do some digital art, some sculpture, and I'd like to explore Eastern aesthetics a lot more.