Sepand Danesh

In his practice, Sepand Danesh employs drawing, painting, and trompe-l’œil techniques to explore the complexities of the human condition. Drawing on his personal history and memories, he situates individual experiences within broader narratives of human history, creating concise and evocative visual stories. Many of his compositions depict figures built from cube-like forms, placed in corners without floors or ceilings, evoking feelings of entrapment and the urge to break free. The desire to escape permeates Danesh’s work. He meticulously arranges countless fragments of memory into dense grids, reflecting the rapid succession of images that pass through his mind. As he explains, these mental movies—composed of scenes from his childhood in Tehran, his family, his post-war schooling, and his migration to Paris—form the basis for drawings that act as archives of lived experience. Before digital recording existed, key moments were preserved analogically, becoming personal artifacts. Today, with the creation of digital twins—geolocation, biometric data, and behavioral tracking—our identities are increasingly duplicated and analyzed, offering both constraints and opportunities for exploration. Danesh’s work interrogates this duality, examining how the interplay between memory, personal history, and contemporary digital life shapes consciousness, identity, and the ongoing human quest for freedom. ...