Daryush Shokof
Daryush Shokof (Alireza Shokoufandeh)[edit]
Biography[edit]
Daryush Shokof is an Iranian artist, Film-maker, song-writer, film script writer, art designer, conseptual artist ,Painter, singer and philosopher who was born in Tehran, Iran and went to school in the USA and finished university studies in the USA and currently lives in Europe.
Eastern New Mexico University[edit]
He finished his studies in the USA with the bachelor degree in Mathematics and Physics from E.N.M.U. ( Mentioned as the notable figures in the university Alumni):
University of Dallas[edit]
He geraduated from the university of Dallas in field of industrial management.
He is noted as Notable figure also in the univerrsity of Dallas :
At the age of 20 he had his first exhibition at Gallery Gorky in New York city .
He moved to Germany in 1985 and started an art career with his first one man show at Gallery Merz in Köln, Germany .
He founded the movment of Maximalism in refrence to the arts and introduced it with a group exhibition at Gallery Schulze in Köln, Germany in 1990 . The artists in the first Maximalist exhibition in the world were :
Mark Kostabi , Robert Green , Jeff Koons, Marcello Jori, Jan Knap, Milan Kunc, Helgi Friedjohnson, Weiner Vaccari and Daryush Shokof himself.
Maximalist exhibitions continued world-wide until 1995 , until other notable world stars such as David Salle, Julian Schnabel were amongst them.
Today more than 5000 greatest artists on the planet address themselves as Maximalist artists.
Daryush Shokof wrote a manifest about Maximalism which led to his Philosophical thoughts called Yekishim.
Yekishim coined him as a philosopher with original ideas about 'Life, death and the reason why people are on planet earth'.
His most original and diffrent artistic achievements during his over 45 years of artistic accomplishments and creativities are :
1. 1985 introduced his "Antenna" sculptures and paintings.
2. "Balance" artworks under which he painted and introduced unique performances and sculptures with some of the most prominent ones as in follows;
A: "Against the war in Iraq": He sat on one side of a huge balance in protest against the war in Iraq in 1990 in Köln and in Milan. On the other side of the huge balance sculpture was a Pyramid built of 4 platforms with these "4" writings , "Industries" , "Bank" , "Politics" and "War" on them.
B. He exhibited a huge balance sculpture in New York city for one week .
The title of this work was Space Symphony in 1999.
On one side an Astronaut played the fiddle while a donkey always started singing to his music on the other side . His show was extremely popular with great crowds supporting it in the Big Apple.. Amazing enough a hysteric woman screamed accusing Shokof of being the Satan himself on the 4th day of this unique street performance which started off from in front of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.
Police got involved and a priest came to the scene with the cross to purify his soul . The pictures and the documentary films taken from this scenes are historically incredible because the woman kept saying Satan will commit huge disaster soon and the undeniable disaster did happen realistically after where the attack of September 11, 2001, shocked the world . Strangely enough the "Twin Towers" dissapeared a year after and the film still exists showing that Daryush Shokof and his performance art take place in front of the "Twin Towers". He himself appears in the footage of this street performance as he is warning against the most inhumane events that are about to shape form soon.
3. Shokof created the conceptual artwork in hope to help find the cure for the HIV disease in 2002 . The project titled Aids Cure consisted of a glass room 5x5 meters square with 500 milion US dollars in form of a Pyramid inside the glass room which was infected by blood from HIV Virus . Anyone who could cure the disease would be able to receive the 500 milion USD.
4. He started Heaven paintings one year before Jeff Koons made his heavenly sculpture and photography with his then wife Ciccolina.
5. His one man show of painted portraits with pacifiers in their mouth consisted of 15 paintings from Karl Marx, to himself. He explained at the opening of the show that all most influential minds he painted with Pacifiers were actually only children in their infancy including himself but have been taken seriously by mass of people due to our ignorances. Portrait of Adolf Hitler was also amongst the first 15 paintings.
6. His show at the museum at the Königlische Direktion consisted of 110 pieces of his works in Berlin, Germany .
8. He made his first Puzzle Paintings in year 2014.
9. He had 2 huge paintings finished under hypnosis Hypnotic Paintings performed by Manfred Knoke a German master Hypnotiser.
10 . 13 Commandments is the title to his next conceptual artwork consisting of 13 stones which 13 different words are engraved on them. The 13 secret behind the words are to be unfolded at the exhibition in 2024.He built the stones in Uslar, Germany in 2016.
11. He shocked a crowd of viewers at his exhibition titled Poison Works where he explained not only all artworks are over dimensional sizes of the most poisoneous elements and beings on planet Earth but that he had actually used the exact lethal poisons on a most tiny spot on each artwork and thus once a person touches that spot it can kill the person in matter of minutes. Half of the crowd left the space immediately afterwards. The show was secured by presence of 6 security people throughout the night who were told not to let anyone get close to any artwork. Shokof explained the reason for creating the artworks were that just like life with all it's beauties is absolutely lethal as well as his Poison Works Paintings with which Life too will definitely kills all creatures without any exceptions.
11. Shokoflowers are the title to his unique concepts creating flowers his style.
12. He developed a most original shape for perfume bottles to be produced and presented under the name Booye Tu which means your scent in Farsi. The concept and idea is registered in Berlin,Germany in 2022.
13. He developed a concept based on his own ideas for 12 watches which each would sell for 25 milion USD. The Concept and Ideas are registered in Berlin, Germany in 2020.
14. In year 2000 He registered and established and introduced a new form of watching movies inside boates and called it BOAT-IN-CINEMAS plus BOAT IN FILM FESTIVALS in Berlin, Germany in 2005. There are currently more than 200 such film screening establishments around the world .
15. Shokof created and intorduced an Application for global communications called KYCE "App" which is also regeistered at Taylor Wessing law firms international in Berlin, Germany in year 2005.
16. He presented and intorduced the formation of the first Museum of Maximalism which is one of the most important global art projects with works of over 500 world great Maximalist artists and minds.
External Links
www.shokofbrand.com