The present sculpture is an inspiring work by Bahman Dadkhah who has always visualized a profound image of the solitary modern man, someone who is always bound by habits as well as social constraints, living in an everlasting solitude.
Dadkhah is a Paris-based, well-known reclusive artist whose profound visual perception has resulted in the creation of individual expressionist sculptures. He gives life to a mass of insensitive, rugged bronze, and tapping into his wild imagination, creates independent individual sculptures that demonstrate his powerful grasp of the capacities of this art form.
Bahman Dadkhah’s sculpture represents a lonely, agitated, and wandering man in a vast, indistinct world, who is living with no meaningful purpose and whose share of reality is a simple, cubic pedestal on which he can lean. It is as if no real connection with the environment exists, and the sculpture is feeling quite out of place.
Paying less attention to details, Dadkhah has visualized a general idea of sculpture in space. His approach induces a strong sense of loneliness, and the figure resembles a human being who has escaped from the chaotic contemporary world, living a lonely life.
His sculptures embody the circumstances of human beings in current social conditions of capitalist societies. In general, they have the complicated situation of modern man as their subject. They are representatives of a perplexed generation who is seeking the truth but cannot find it. This generation lacks any identity, and appears to be unprotected, ailing, agonized, and incapacitated.
The French philosopher, René Schérer, comments on Dadkhah’s sculptures, “The yoke that today weighs on hostages wants them to remain dumb and deaf, yet they have unspoken words with their mouth shut, hands tied up, and gaze on eternity. They have lost their real life and are questioning us. We are also hostages to superior powers. We are coins in this huge exchange shop where our bodies and souls get evaluated. An unknown yoke puts its weight on our life.”[1]
In addition to being an eminent figure in the illustration of children’s books, Bahman Dadkhah is also a world class sculptor, successfully participating in international auctions. A similar sculpture by the artist was sold for $20,000 at the Christie’s Dubai auction in 2014.
[1] Schérer, René, Bahman Dadkhah, translated by Ebrahim Golestan, 27 June 2010.