TAHA HEYDARI was born and raised in Tehran, he moved to Baltimore in 2014 to pursue his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), completing his degree in Hoffberger School of Painting, in 2016. Since his graduation, he was granted an Artist Visa and has worked full-time in his studio in Baltimore.

He is interested in painting as a possibility of encountering what images do in relation to what they are made of and how they appear to us. Pixelated broken tv images, caused by Iranian government satellite jamming, triggered Heydari’s fascination with the moment of glitch, as a visible instance of the separation between the technology of fabricating, presenting images, and what the images do and show. He uses acrylic and various palette knives, rollers, and airbrush to create complex, highly detailed surfaces where he can accentuate the significance of tools, material, and technology in the act of representation.

Heydari is represented by Haines Gallery in the US and Ab-Anbar Gallery in Tehran and his work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC (2017), Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2016-2018), and Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York, NY (2015).