Current Exhibition:

Meditation
Chris Page and Ali Moshiri
May 10 - June 15, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 10, 6 - 9 p.m.

wünderarts is pleased to announce MEDITATION, an exhibition of the work of local artists Chris Page and Ali Moshiri.  The exhibition features the artists’ meditative explorations of the natural and imagined worlds around them.

Chris Page

Born in Madrid to ex-pat, bohemian parents and raised in Boston by his maternal grandparents, Chris Page began seriously pursuing art after his graduation from high school and conversion to the Bahá’í faith in the early 1970s.  Following studies in Colorado, and back in Boston at Northeastern, and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Page relocated to the Five College Area with his wife, Sarah. At UMass Amherst, Page studied painting with James Hendricks. However, he credits his primary training as a painter to a close association with Michael Phillips, now a professor of fine art at the College of South Carolina in Charlestown.

Page’s travels have had a strong influence on his work. In 1995, Page traveled to the northern part of Baffin Island landing in Pond Inlet, 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Influenced by the colors and profound openness of the Artic, Page’s painting became very focused on merging abstraction and landscape. Page has started to work from memory and knowledge of stream flow pattern in his most recent work, influenced and inspired by the power and intimacy of prayer and meditation experienced during a 2004 Bahá’í  pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel.

His work has been exhibited since the 70s at venues such as the Herter Gallery at UMass, APE, and Haddad Lascano. Page and his wife Sarah live in Belchertown.

Ali Moshiri

Born in Iran, Ali Moshiri was educated in England and the US, returning to his native country for medical school. A young and untrained, but passionate, artist, Moshiri’s sketchbook was a constant companion in his spare time. After his residency in Cincinnati, Ohio, Moshiri worked at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he met his mentor, Leo Garel, who had been the artist in residence and a pioneer in art psychotherapy. After a period of painting on his own, Moshiri sought guidance and instruction from Garel, developing a relationship that lasted until Garel’s death in 1999.                                         

Moshiri’s work is based on observations from nature, but primarily landscape. His work over the past 15 years, while still based on these observations, has veered toward abstraction, though he does not see it as such. “The ultimate result is that of the paint and the painted surface, in an attempt to capture its own nature without any hints or references to anything external to the painting,” says Moshiri about his work. “I feel music is the highest art form that stands on its own elements and capabilities. I strive to achieve that in painting. Within this framework I do not see my work as abstractions. They are what they are.”

Ali Moshiri has shown at the former Fauve Gallery in Amherst, Image Gallery in Stockbridge, and was represented by Ute Stebich Gallery in Lenox from 1991 until its closure in 2002. His paintings were in the set of Before and After, starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson. Moshiri and his family live in Amherst.