For the 3rd time in a row, Moooi is eager and ready to transform the monumental space of 1.700 m2, by showcasing an assembly of inspirational living quarters, absorbed into the breath-taking depths of Rahi Rezvani’s artistic photography.
This is the third year that Moooi has used photography at this scale for its Milan presentation.
Two years ago it featured images taken by Erwin Olaf, and last year’s showcase included architectural and interior photographs by Massimo Listri.
A selection of 39 artistic photographs by Rahi Rezvani will be exhibited in all its glory, with a towering height of 4.5 meters, thus generating an emotional trip into the mysteries of the human soul, image by image.
‘All people are different, but some are more different than others’* explains Moooi’s Art Director and Co-Founder Marcel Wanders, thus explaining one of the reasons that brought him to single out Rahi Rezvani’ photography as the perfect match for the Moooi presentation.
As always, Moooi strives to make the environment more beautiful, although this year finding your way home has a double meaning: at Moooi’s collection presentation and deep inside you, where emotions and feelings are free to blossom and express their intensity in response to an artistic and surreal world.
“This year we worked with Rahi who’s a fantastic photographer,” said Wanders. “I was asked by a magazine if someone could take my portrait and I didn’t want to do it, but then I went to the website and I thought, this is great work.”
There is a strong affinity between Rahi’s art and Moooi’s designs, for both parties create beauty in an uncommon way and generate strong reactions in the spectators by challenging their imagination.
“We are really proud to be the first brand to present the photography of Rahi Rezvani to the world of design. Its style and beauty blend perfectly with the interesting lighting pieces and amazing furniture of Moooi’s new collection”, reveals Marcel Wanders about the artistic cooperation.
The result of this marriage of creative minds is an astonishingly inspiring world
Where: via Savona 56, Milan
About Rahi Rezvani
Rahi Rezvani is, in his own words, an “image-maker”, whose main purpose in life is to keep honoring his gift for capturing, in a heartbeat, moments of magic and revealing them on photograph.
Like a magician, he has learned to master the moment and feel when the magic is there, ready to be immortalized forever.
“If you are an artist you know what the magic is. In a split second it touches your heart and you recognize it”, he reveals and adds: “I can think about a shot for days, yet I know from experience that I only have minutes to create a piece of art”.
Born in 1978 in Teheran, Rahi’s childhood represents the most tranquil period of his life and gives him the opportunity of experiencing a deep parental love and the freedom of expressing his personality.
He will always be thankful to his parents for supporting him throughout childhood with a strong respect for his talents.
When he was 12 years old they even invited a good family friend to become Rahi’s mentor, who gave him painting lessons.
One evening, when he was 15, Rahi just got back from school and saw his mum. She was enchanting, having applied special make-up to go to a family party.
“I got inspired by her face and photographed her”, explains Rahi, who printed this image on painting paper, which he still shows proudly to his guests at the studio. Of course, after seeing this beautiful picture, all his family wanted to be photographed by him!
They took turns to pose in front of his camera.
Maybe this was the moment that defined Rahi’s preference and special love for portrait photography.
At only 17 years old he started working as a set designer, until the director was so taken by Rahi’s vision of the set and unique perspective that he decided to fire the photographer and continue working with Rahi alone.
This turn of events only deepened Rahi’s passion for photography, reinforcing his decision at 18 years old to study art.
He could choose between the university faculties of Art or Physics and, although he had excelled in mathematics and gotten his diploma two years earlier than expected, he decided to follow his dream.
Supported by his parents, he enrolled at the Art University of Teheran in 1996, without regrets.
That same year Rahi’s father bought him is first professional camera, a Nikon F5, as a present.
According to Rahi, it must have cost his dad almost two months of his salary. Rahi never forgot this gesture: “My parents have always been very supportive of my artistic choices, which at the time was not conventional at all”.
Unfortunately he wasn’t able to finish his studies because three years later, in 1999, he was sentenced to leave the country for photographing something he shouldn’t have. This event opens the darkest chapter of Rahi’s life, his country-less period, casting dark shadows of grief and loneliness along his path and into his artwork.
In this suspended reality he still managed, in challenging conditions, to work and produce some fine paintings, which he conserves in his studio. He was offered a great deal of money for one of them and, although in need, he didn’t linger in his decision: “My heart never hesitated and I refused to part with it”.
After waiting a long time for a turn of events, finally Rahi was shipped to The Netherlands, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 2004 to 2008. “During these years studying in Holland”, he says, “I have mainly learned one thing: to translate my style, my magic in a more European context”.
Rahi’s technique hasn’t really changed since his youth.
He has always looked after the entire process by himself, from setting the lights to retouching the images, until printing them on paper. Nobody else is involved in between. Although he has evolved, the sharp intensity of his photographs and the timeless atmospheres that pervade them are already recognizable in his very first shots.
As always was, the focal points of most of his portrait images are people’s eyes, whose piercing expressions leave us breathless and full of questions.
“People talk with their eyes. I help them reveal their message”, he replies when asked what makes eyes so special and central in his photography.
Rahi has gone through a lot in his life. He feels deeply and talks with a long-lived wisdom that is remarkably acute for such a young man.
He clarifies: “I am a black and white person, un-scared of dividing the world in good and bad. When you have a past like mine, you don’t have time to think in shades of gray”.
This vision pervades his life and heart
