Nicky Nodjoumi, Private Agenda - 2004

Nicky Nodjoumi, Private Agenda
October 23 - November 24, 2004

Nicky Nodjoumi was born in Kermanssah, Iran, 1942 close to border of Iraq.

During the 1980’s under the Ayatollah Khomeini rule, 150 Nicky Nodjoumi paintings dealing with anti-revolutionary imagery were confiscated and destroyed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran. Nodjoumi is considered by the Iranian regime, to be anti-Islamic and pro-American. Since this aggressive act of censorship on the part of the Iranian government, Nodjoumi has lived, worked and exhibited in New York.

The paintings included in Nodjoumi’s Private Agenda, force the viewer to confront difficult subjects in deserted spaces, with techniques that capture the timelessness and universality of the human struggle and its desperation. Nodjoumi’s painting style is earthy and literally toned down by the use of a limited color palette, echoing a feeling old newspapers and political cartoons.

Nodjoumi’s subject matter consists of Iranian mullahs, American leaders, corporate characters, as well as religious and sexual taboos, science and rationalism. Nodjoumi often depicts male subjects clad in business suits, embodying the quintessential bureaucrat or corporate executive. In Nodjoumi’s work, the suit takes on the layer of meaning of the western man.

These obscure narratives intelligently and humorously confront the viewer with the absurdity and hypocrisy behind those characters that control our lives. Nodjoumi’s Private Agenda, is a search for truth, whether through an inner or outer world, which we may or may not know.