Helplessness and happiness are so close
The haunting imagery of the
painter Bahram Hajou
They are expressive and can verge on the painful.
Bahram Hajou’s paintings challenge the observer.
It is not possible to merely find them aesthetically
pleasing or superficially beautiful and then, after a
hurried glance, carry on as usual. In the almost 40
years of his work to date, the painter has cultivated
his own style, which is immediately recognisable
and cannot be compared to any role models.
Bahram Hajou persistently refuses to participate in
seductive fashions and banal trends, ignores com-
mercial temptations and popular ambitions. For
him as an artist pleasing is not a category. He is
not willing to curry favour, he wants to remain true
to himself, to continue to pursue his themes and to
develop his techniques.
The artist is a traveller between worlds; he is some-
one who has retained his subtle perception and is
able to use the medium of his sensitivity creatively.
His works are interesting and exciting for the art
market precisely because they were not created
for it. Bahram Hajou is unique - he is a Titan.
His pictorial language is as intense as his motifs
are personal. They almost always allow deep in-
sights into the artist‘s rich inner life. They are open,
authentic and intimate, because they express
pain and horror, aggression and violence, lust and
desire so immediately and directly. In many of his
paintings, helplessness and happiness lie so close
together
In the first years after studying at the Kunstakade-
mie Muenster, Bahram Hajou often painted purely
abstractly. Dark and powerful colours dominate his
works, his painting style is impulsive and expressi-
ve. He relies entirely on his inspiration and waits to
see what appears on the canvas. Even at this time
he knows how to apply black with a determined
gesture and thus set unmistakable accents.
His first works are reminiscent of the joy of expe-
rimentation and the spirit of discovery of Informel.
However, the stronger and more often he works
figuratively, the more his characteristic imagery un-
folds and the more his focus is directed towards
feelings, interpersonal relationships and conflicts.
Dark sections of landscape and confusing citys-
capes emerge, which are anything but picturesque,
idyllic and tranquil. They express wild, furious and
impetuous emotions. The paintings are charged
like a potentiometer. After this phase his inimita-
ble pictures of relationships emerge, which could
be ingenious translations and records of ‘systemic
constellations’.
In these paintings, body postures and positions
bear witness to the inability to talk to each other,
to trust and to love each other. You can feel how
arduous it is for those depicted to communicate
with and understand each other. One of them gives
the other the cold shoulder, bends over crushed
or overwhelmed, sinks into loneliness and melan-
choly.
The individuals are usually shown naked and bare,
vulnerable and defenceless. The truth expressed
in these works of art is unadorned and unvarni-
shed. It is always individual and specific, but at the
same time universal and timeless. People struggle
desperately for a successful life, for harmony and
love. They fail because of their inadequacies, their
cravings for power and their selfishness. This work
is nourished by a humane hope which opposes an
existentialist or even nihilistic contemplation of life.
In haunting self-portraits he makes himself the sub-
ject, exploring in his own gaze, physiognomy and
gestures his personality, identity, origin and histo-
ry. Later, protagonists with precisely his likeness,
profile and striking face will appear in many of his
paintings.
103In particular where his paintings deal with tensions
and conflicts, power and impotence, they are like
an examination of conscience. As an alter ego they
seem to want to question the artist again and again
about the extent to which he himself is entangled,
guilty or has become an accomplice by not taking
action.
In his paintings, Bahram Hajou deals with violence
and its many faces. Open and covert violence
among people, the oppression and rape of wo-
men, the struggle of the sexes in relationships and
time and time again the violence that people inflict
on each other.
His eloquent paintings are subtle and profound.
Their message is usually encrypted and often hid-
den under several layers of paint. Bahram Hajou is
a master of overpainting. The past is painted over
in white, as if in this way it could become a distant
memory.
Many of his paintings are lamentations - painful and
angry at the same time, sincere and full of compas-
sion. The scenes are sketched on the canvas with
a charcoal pencil. For such themes, the artist pre-
fers large formats. The paint is applied impulsively
to the rough, untreated canvas. Finally, contours
are gone over again with charcoal or pitch black
tar. These paintings are built up in layers. They are
the result of a process, whose course can be follo-
wed. At the same time, these works are of an over-
whelming aesthetic. Bahram Hajou paints against
forgetting and the suppression of memories. The
observer is required to work through the interrelati-
onships layer by layer like a detective. Some of the
evidence that would allow an interpretation is well
hidden.
All paints have their own character. ‘I use my own
paints,’ says the artist. ‘Acrylic paints are mixed
with powder pigments. Each colour has its own
meaning to me.’ By adding white, the luminosity of
the pure colours is broken. They look like casein
paints. The result is a palette of individual tones
and shades. Sometimes applied thinly and trans-
lucently as if he were painting with watercolours,
sometimes thick and paste-like as if he wanted to
apply a stamp to his painting.
Time and time again Bahram Hajou uses the co-
lours white, light blue, yellow and orange. These
preferred colours are his trademark. With tar he
sets accents. They act as exclamation marks that
immediately catch the viewer‘s eye and direct his
or her gaze.
Bahram Hajou‘s path to painting was a winding
one. From 1976 onwards he studied Sports and
Art at the Pädagogische Hochschule Muenster.
After a brief period of teaching at a comprehen-
sive school, he devoted himself to fine arts from
the early 1990s onwards. He studied at the Kunst-
akademie Muenster and after graduating became
a master student of Prof Norbert Tadeusz.
Bahram Hajou sees himself as a citizen of the
world. He is at home in France, Jordan and Leba-
non. He exhibits in Poland, Hungary, the USA and
many other countries of the world. The language of
his paintings is understood all over the world and
in every culture. As an artist, Bahram Hajou is like
a seismograph; he perceives subliminal tensions,
conflicts and human feelings and with his untamed
creativity transforms them into great art.
Dr Jörg Bockow
2 January 2018