Babak Ganjei is a London-based artist and illustrator.
Babak Ganjei | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1978 (age 45–46) |
Early life and education
editGanjei was born in London in 1978, after his parents moved from Iran the year before.[1] He grew up around Primrose Hill until moving to Bournemouth at the age of eleven. He has described this move as "a bit like suddenly being the only ethnics in the town" and as "guaranteeing that our teenage years were spent understanding what it is to be an outsider". He started drawing at a young age, as his mother was a painter, and his father an architect.[2][3]
Ganjei studied at Central Saint Martins in London.[4] He graduated in 2001 with a degree in fine arts, according to an oil-painted CV he exhibited in 2018.[2]
Career
editAccording to Hannah Silver writing for Wallpaper, the decade after Ganjei graduated was spent playing in bands and creating comics. Ganjei has described the years 2005 to 2011 as when he "join[ed] bands to be broke in a gang".[2] During this period, he published the comic book Hilarious Consequences (2010), and played in the band Absentee for six years.[2] They were signed to Mephis Industries, and released their final album in 2008.[5] Ganjei and two other members of Absentee were also in the band Wet Paint.[6]
In 2014, Ganjei received coverage from Daily Express, The Independent, Metro, and BBC Radio 5 Live for auctioning some twigs on eBay[2] alongside other unusual items like handwritten "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" lyrics.[7] The same year, he published Babak Ganjei's Roadhouse, a graphic novel based on the 1989 Patrick Swayze film Road House. It was described as "astonishingly good" by Aaron Souppouris of The Verge.[8]
In 2017, Channel 4's short film series Random Acts featured Ganjei's satirical animated comedy Taste of Your Own Food, about dating in supermarkets. He has also produced the short films Waiting for Potato and Freelancer with production company Blink.[9][10]
In 2018, Ganjei exhibited a solo show, It’s Really Not Funny, at London's War Gallery. Works displayed in this show included an oil-painted CV, and a painting of his Barclaycard. He tried to sell the painting to Barclaycard, but they did not purchase it and suggested he cancel his card for security reasons.[2]
He also published his first book with Rough Trade Books, Film Ideas.[11] The concept for the book originated when Ganjei was retweeted by comedian Rob Delaney, and was consequently followed on Twitter by a number of film producers. Babak then started tweeting film ideas.[12]
In 2019, Ganjei featured in the BBC Radio 4 programme Can My Eleven Year Old Fix My Life? with his son Arthur.[13] When Arthur turned 12, this was followed with another programme, Arthur Cares, in which he acted as an agony uncle and dressed his father up as a dinosaur to promote his father's art.[14][15]
In 2021, fashion boutique Browns showed a selection of Ganjei's neons and works on paper in their Shoreditch store in an exhibition called Honey Wagon. Ganjei described the structure of the show as being like a band playing a set full of greatest hits.[16] This year he also published his second book with Rough Trade, Art Is The Thing Nobody Asked You To Do, which the publisher describes as "a radical new take on the artists' manifesto".[17][1] In 2021 Ganjei also designed a commission for Liverpool's Bluecoat gallery.[18]
He would work with the Bluecoat again for a 2024 solo show, Thanks for Having Me. This included a section entitled "Greatest Hits".[19] The gallery described Ganjei's exhibition as "reflecting back on a life of operating on the margins and never quite being sure where he belongs".[18]
Style and influences
editGanjei describes his early influences as the band Nirvana, and the punk / DIY aesthetic. His work is frequently confessional and humorous.[16][4] He is noted for his text-based paintings, which Dazed described as "reading like fragments of a diary or notebook while often exposing the mechanisms of their own production ('This art takes about 15-20 min') or revealing snippets of dialogue from his interior monologue ('I'm in the bush outside and I really love you')".[16]
Emily Gosling writing for It's Nice That described his paintings of sitting rooms from sitcoms as having a naive style. Gosling also described his illustrations of acts playing London's Vision festival, including Camera Obscura, Fat White Family, Holy Fuck and Jens Lekman, as "sweet doodlings".[20]
A review of his Bluecoat show for Art in Liverpool described the exhibition of a letter to a friend with the line "I could keep going but there’s a part of me that is already thinking I need to keep this snappy in case it is published or printed on a wall" as "performance [art] of the self in a uniquely dishonest form".[21]
References
edit- ^ a b Ganjei, Babak (2021). Art Is The Thing Nobody Asked You To Do. Rough Trade Books. ISBN 978-1-914236-10-5.
- ^ a b c d e f Quietus, The (2018-01-28). "Buisness Propositions: Babak Ganjei Talks Art, Ideas, And eBay". The Quietus. Retrieved 2024-11-24.
- ^ a b Graham, Georgia. "Jokes And Genius: Babak Ganjei At Browns East". Browns.
- ^ a b Silver, Hannah (2021-08-06). "Babak Ganjei: 'If Instagram went down I don't know if I'd exist'". wallpaper.com. Retrieved 2024-11-24.
- ^ "Absentee Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More | ..." AllMusic. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ "Wet Paint really should be bigger than they are". Loud And Quiet. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ Saul, Heather (2014-03-29). "'Unique' twigs go on eBay - and attract bids". The Independent.
- ^ Souppouris, Aaron (2014-07-30). "Patrick Swayze kicks ass in an illustrated, philosophical 'Road House'". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ "Curtis Brown". www.curtisbrown.co.uk. Retrieved 2024-11-27.
- ^ Quietus, The (2017-09-01). "WATCH: Teaser For Babak Ganjei's Random Acts". The Quietus. Retrieved 2024-11-27.
- ^ Ganjei, Babak (2018). Film Ideas. Rough Trade. ISBN 978-1-912722-09-9.
- ^ "FILM IDEAS - Babak Ganjei". Rough Trade Books. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
- ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Can My Eleven Year Old Fix My Life?". BBC. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ Sawyer, Miranda (2020-12-19). "The week in radio and podcasts: Arthur Cares; Where Is George Gibney?; Mothers of Invention". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Arthur Cares". BBC. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ^ a b c Dazed (2021-06-09). "Babak Ganjei's confessional artworks reveal his hilarious inner monologue". Dazed. Retrieved 2024-11-24.
- ^ "ART IS THE THING NOBODY ASKED YOU TO DO - Babak Ganjei". Rough Trade Books. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
- ^ a b "Bluecoat to host major exhibitions by Babak Ganjei, Joshua Clague,…". Bluecoat. Retrieved 2024-11-27.
- ^ "The Double Negative" Portrait of the Artist as aMiddle-Aged ManBabak Ganjei @ Bluecoat – Reviewed". Retrieved 2024-11-27.
- ^ "Babak Ganjei paints 90s sitcom sitting rooms. But which one's which?". www.itsnicethat.com. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
- ^ "Review: Babak Ganjei: Thanks for Having Me, at Bluecoat". Art in Liverpool. 2024-03-04. Retrieved 2024-11-27.