Pouria Khojastehpay, is a Dutch/Iranian artist and photographer, currently living in The Netherlands. The artist was born in 1993 in Shiraz, Iran before spending a large part of his childhood in a Dutch refugee camp. His new found environment in Eindhoven later on, would have a deep impact upon him and his work. With the urban environment lacking intensity of colour and saturated in greys from the excess asphalt, concrete and bricks. These fundamental early years serve as a basis for the artists work. From his Iranian background, to the islamic revolutions, wars, sanctions, oppression and the bleakness of Eindhoven's urban architecture. “The bleak, gray atmosphere is what I feel Iran went through during and after the Islamic Revolution”, says Khojastehpay.
His work was originally influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk anime & manga AKIRA, and later (dystopian) novels by Paul Virilio, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell & J.G. Ballard. This dystopian and SCI-FI plays a major role in the artist's work. As he manipulates and uses photomontage technique to conjure and create fictional landscapes and scenarios, turning the lyrical into the visually poetical. Brutalist architecture filtrates throughout and frames scapes within the artist's work, as he draws inspiration from architects such as Claude Parent, Lebbeus Woods & Owen Luder. Some of the Brutalist buildings in the artwork are world renown, while the others are digitally manipulated into something else or constructed from a method of montaging several buildings by the artist.
His work was originally influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk anime & manga AKIRA, and later (dystopian) novels by Paul Virilio, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell & J.G. Ballard. This dystopian and SCI-FI plays a major role in the artist's work. As he manipulates and uses photomontage technique to conjure and create fictional landscapes and scenarios, turning the lyrical into the visually poetical. Brutalist architecture filtrates throughout and frames scapes within the artist's work, as he draws inspiration from architects such as Claude Parent, Lebbeus Woods & Owen Luder. Some of the Brutalist buildings in the artwork are world renown, while the others are digitally manipulated into something else or constructed from a method of montaging several buildings by the artist.
