After Photographic Festival”CONTACT”in Canada, Edward Lucie-Smith has selected 4 Persbook winners again:
Asieh Roholamini, AmirHossien Keihani,Bahareh Bisheh, Mahmoud Maktabi for an exhibition called”3 Worlds in 1″in  Lithuania. 
 
On 29th of June, 2011 (Wednesday), at 6 p.m., Klaipeda Culture Communication Centre Exhibition Hall (Aukštoji str. 1/Didžioji Vandens str. 2, Klaipeda, Lithuania) opens three exhibitions “London International”, “Polemically small” and “New Iranian art” curated by Edward Lucie-Smith together with Zavier Ellis, Janet Rady and Ignas Kazakevičius.

3 Worlds in 1
The aim of this exhibition is to give a snapshot view of two very different contemporary art worlds – the one that now exists in London, and the one that has grown up in Iran in the years since the fall of the Shah in 1979. London is now undoubtedly one of the world capitals of contemporary art, rivaled in this respect only by Berlin, since both Paris and New York seem to be losing their attraction as centers for young artists. It owes its pre-eminence to the rise of what are now called the YBAs (Young British Artists) in the 1990s. However the YBA group are not so young any more – they are in their mid 40s – and several generations of artists have made their appearance in London since then. My concept here has been to show a few selected artists on a larger scale, and many more in a section entitled Polemically Small. Polemically Small stresses two things – first the strong revival of painting and collage in London, and second the return to small, sometimes miniature scale, which is a revolt against the inflated rhetoric that seems to have overtaken so much contemporary art. This section has been chosen in conjunction with Zavier Ellis, who is not only a practicing artist, represented in the other section of the show, but a gallerist (www.charliesmithlondon.com) and curator well known for a series of innovative survey shows under the title The Future Can Wait (www.thefuturecanwait.com). For help with this section special thanks are due to Jason Zeloof.

Iran has produced an astonishing quantity of interesting art in recent years – it is undoubtedly the creative powerhouse in the visuals arts of the Middle East. It has been particularly strong in photography. The photographs shown here emerged from a competition for young Iranian artists run on Facebook last year, where I had the honor to be chairman of the jury. The works by Hojat Amani, who lives and works in Luristan, stress the way Iranian contemporary art draws on age-old roots. His subject-matter – angels – is something deeply rooted in Iranian and Islamic tradition. There are also some works by artists from an Iranian Stuckist group – Stuckism being a deliberately retro response to conventional avant-gardism that was pioneered in Britain and that has now given birth to more than 200 affiliated groups in 47 countries, bound together by the enormous web site www.stuckism.com. That is to say, it is a supposedly retro impulse that is expert in the use of the most modern means of communication. The Iranian section owes a great deal to my friend and colleague Janet Rady (www.janetradyfineart.com).

Taken together, these two sections demonstrate both the importance of local traditions and at the same time the inexorable growth of artist internationalism. It is worth noting, for example, that the Iranian photographs shown here have passed all frontiers electronically. They arrived as picture files, and were printed in Klaipeda.

The third world of the title is of course Lithuania itself. Lithuanian art is represented by a small group of Polemically Small works, to demonstrate how the idea works in a Lithuanian context. The most important thing, however, is the Lithuanian audience. How will these works impact on Lithuanian culture? This exhinition has been made for a Lithuanian public. Their response will be very much part of the show.

Edward Lucie-Smith

Organizer: Klaipeda Culture Communication Centre (Lithuania)
Curators: Edward Lucie-Smith, Zavier Ellis (video section in “London International”), Ignas Kazakevičius (Lithuanian section in “Polemically small”)
Co-curators: Zavier Ellis (“Polemically small”), Janet Rady (“New Iranian art”)
Coordinator: Neringa Bumblienė