Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi balances pattern with painterly abstraction
By Kriston Capps, The Washington Post
December 13, 2023
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi might be two painters.
One is the hand behind the gorgeous tazhib: intricate patterns of illumination borrowed from Islamic art forms. In her paintings, Ilchi designs floral and lattice motifs based on Persian crafts, drawing on her experience growing up in Tehran.
The other painter is experimental: an abstract-oriented artist looking at new ways to build up surfaces. This painter produces clouds and stains in a toxic palette, making bold textured works that look almost hazardous to the touch.
On Ilchi’s surfaces, violent abstraction and delicate illumination jockey for significance. Her perfectly hyphenated paintings take the form of surreal landscapes. The stars in her skies peek through arabesque ornamentation. The mountains on her horizons rise over luminous veils.
Click here to read the full review.
Ongoing: We are forever folding into the night at HEMPHILL
Anupma Sahay for the Washington CityPaper
November 16th, 2023
Artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi investigates invasion and equilibrium, weaving harmony through tension, nature in celestial experiences, and dreams into reality in her newest exhibition on display at HEMPHILL. Ilchi’s paintings merge seemingly contrasting spaces as a commentary on sociopolitical landscapes, drawing inspiration from her own Iranian American heritage.
HEDIEH JAVANSHIR ILCH MUSEUM ACQUISITION
THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
Through its Contemporaries Acquisition Fund, The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC recently acquired an artwork by Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi. This mixed media artwork incorporates ornamentations of Tazhib and abstract floods of color, fusing both Western and Persian art traditions. Plan a visit to experience the artist's newest work in person.
![In the galleries: Works of art emerge via waking up with a word in mind](https://img.artlogic.net/w_300,h_230,c_lfill/exhibit-e/59495fb4dca8372462d444a8/7ac5a57c8195c4ed8845537408727c72.png)
In the galleries: Works of art emerge via waking up with a word in mind
By Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, May 21, 2021.
"As a painter, Robin Rose has often followed musical cues, naming his abstractions after songs that prompted them. He works in encaustic, a mix of pigment and hot wax that requires a quick hand and whose immediacy has “a sonic quality,” he told a recent visitor to Hemphill Artworks. Yet the veteran local artist’s new “19 Paintings” hatched from text."
Poetry and Word Pictures: Ilchi and Rose at Hemphill | May 4, 2021
Written by Claudia Rousseau for East City Art Reviews
"Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi’s richly colored abstract landscapes in acrylic and watercolor seem the absolute opposite of Rose’s apparently minimalist encaustics, but there are connections. The lyrical title of Ilchi’s show, Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow, and the poetry of the titles of each of her paintings enhance their equally poetic imagery. All painted in the past few months, they speak to each other in a voice that is tender, but aching with longing. Similarly, Rose’s 19 Paintings, all made between March 2020 and January 2021, were each inspired by a word that the artist woke up with in the middle of the night, as he explains in a video interview made in connection with this show"
Read, "Poetry and Word Pictures: Ilchi and Rose at Hemphill," here.
![Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow - Video](https://img.artlogic.net/w_600,h_460,c_lfill/exhibit-e/59495fb4dca8372462d444a8/f1f58eedcf0c75df11af3c41bac0c855.jpeg)
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow - Video
Created in conjunction with "Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow", on view at HEMPHILL April 1 - May 28, this video features an exclusive look at the artist's process and a selection of paintings included in the exhibition.
![Songs of Mihyar the Damascene](https://img.artlogic.net/w_300,h_230,c_lfill/exhibit-e/59495fb4dca8372462d444a8/a1fc8664d44cef219aab2387bd0996ef.jpeg)
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene
By Adonis, Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Translator), Ivan Eubanks (Translator)
Featuring cover artwork by Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi.
"Cloud, mirror, stone, thunder, eyelid, desert, sea. Through a dead or dying land, Mihyar walks: a figure of heroic individualism and dissent, part-Orpheus, part-Zarathustra. Where he goes, the austere building-blocks of his world become the expressions of passionate emotion, of visionary exaltation and despairing melancholy. The traditions of the Ancient Greeks, the Bible and the Quran flow about and through him."
'The greatest living poet of the Arab world' Guardian
Hemphill Coloring Book
by HEMPHILL
07/15/2020
This coloring book was created during the shelter-in-place period of 2020. Thanks to the artists for their participation and inspiration. Art endures and so will we. Be well and thank you for continued support.
![Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi](https://img.artlogic.net/w_300,h_230,c_lfill/exhibit-e/59495fb4dca8372462d444a8/eab54a09c6ddcb4e68b7bac9348d8dc0.jpeg)
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi
Ebb and Flow
11/05/2019
by Tina Coplan, Home & Design Magazine
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi
East City Artnote: Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: I surrender to you, ashen lands and blue skies at HEMPHILL Fine Arts
06/24/2019
by Ashley Shah, East City Art
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi
In the galleries: Whimsy rendered starkly, in black and white
06/07/2019
by Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi
5 Artists on the Verge of a Breakthrough Whose Work You Can See This May
05/13/2019
By Katie White, artnet news
MORE or LESS
The past, present and future of abstraction.
May 24, 2018
Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper
35 Days
In the galleries: A colorful survey of Washington artists
July, 29, 2017
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
35 Days is "a museum-worthy survey of D.C. art."
35 Days
35 Days
June 24, 2017
Stephanie Rudig, Washington City Paper
"This isn’t just a Color School roundup, however: The show includes artists deploying color to completely different ends, like the trippy pattern-based work of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, as well as some varying landscape photography artists like Anne Rowland and William Christenberry."
Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.
An Iranian-American Artist’s Unfinished Abstractions
December 29, 2016
Kriston Capps, Hyperallergic
"Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone, the lyrical title for Ilchi’s first show at Hemphill Fine Arts, is full of graphical contradictions and circular motions."
Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi at Hemphill Fine Arts, Washington DC
December 15, 2016
Isabella Mason, Blouin Artinfo
"The exhibition marks the debut of Iranian artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi at the gallery, with her works which majorly reflect an interest in the fusion of visual conventions of Western abstraction and Persian Art, evoking allegories of intrusion and invasion, that moves beyond the personal and take references of historical and contemporary socio-political conflicts."
Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.
In the galleries: A ‘Homage to Hillary’ is repurposed
December 15, 2016
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"Rivulets of abstract color, often vivid blues and greens, are punctuated by precise imagery in Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi’s painting and mixed-media work."
Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.
At Hemphill Fine Arts, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi's Paintings Consume and Awe
December 2, 2016
Erin Devine, Washington City Paper
"The paintings of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi immediately materialize before the viewer as something fresh and consuming."
![Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.](https://img.artlogic.net/w_600,h_460,c_lfill/exhibit-e/59495fb4dca8372462d444a8/3aeadaeaf66a5cc5d478a600df2b7f9b.png)
Everything became nearness and all the nearness turned to stone.
Vision Quest: Young talent Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi sets DC's art scene ablaze with fiery abstractions
November 2016
Holly Mazar-Fox, DC Modern Luxury
"Seeking inspiration from the rich traditions of both Eastern and Western art practices, Javanshir Ilchi's alluring work speaks to her soul as an artist and her creative genius as weaving complex concepts together with visual fluidly."