Artist: Hessam Samavatian

The title of Hessam Samavatian’s solo exhibition ‘Earendel’, refers to the most distant known star, a point of light that reaches us from the edges of the observable universe. Just as this light has traveled billions of years before becoming visible to us, images, memories, and traces of the past exist in a constant state of displacement. They emerge from one time and space, only to be perceived and reinterpreted in another. Photography, as a medium inherently tied to light and time, plays a crucial role in this reflection—capturing moments while simultaneously separating them from their origin.

Following this idea, the exhibition presents works that resist the notion of a ‘decisive moment’ and embrace the passage of time and the latent potential within materials. These are sculptures that hold their own shadows, images that reveal their own breaking points, and material processes that inscribe the passing of time, to investigate their own awareness and the effects of processes of change. Traces, impressions, and indexical marks feature prominently, whether through the fragility of plaster forms, the alchemy of photographic development, or the shifting boundaries between material and image.

In doing so, each artwork functions as a model for an idea, not as a fixed statement but as a point of reference within a larger system of relations. The exhibition invites the viewer to consider how meaning emerges through context, how time inscribes itself into images and objects, and how perception is shaped by both presence and absence. Drawing from traditions of optical science, photographic experimentation, and conceptual inquiry, Earendel is not only about what is distant but also about what connects us to the faraway—whether through light, memory, or the act of seeing itself.

Hessam Samavatian (b. 1984, Iran, Tehran), lives and works in Vienna. He studied photography at the University of Applied Arts under Gabriele Rothemann and graduated in 2017 with the extensive diploma “Im Schatten kein Schwarz” [No Black in the Shadows]. In his mostly installative works, photography often becomes an independent theme and motif and correspondingly assumes unusual forms. The focus is on the chemical-optical properties of photography, such as the light sensitivity of analogue materials, or the technical standards, such as the image formats produced by the large manufacturers, but also the metaphorical readability of photography as shadow or a vessel. Hessam Samavatian takes up the symbolism of terms such as “candela” or focuses on moments that differ from the conventional “decisive moment”, such as when light passes through the camera lens and throws an image of the outside world inside the camera. But he also plays with the rules of the art market, with prominent role models, cultural traditions, literature etc., and understands how to place the respective repertoire in new and contemporary contexts.

Artistic research, technical expertise and repeated experiments produce calculated, media-specific and simultaneously poetic and varied works that can always address the viewer directly. Born in Iran and living in Vienna since 1998, Hessam Samavatian repeatedly finds himself confronted with the cultural differences between the European and Persian/Iranian conceptual worlds. He compares their scientific contributions to optics, for example, or—mostly unconsciously—links elements of these diverse traditions in his works.