Leila Heller Gallery is delighted to announce the solo exhibition by Reza Derakshani, Crowns & leaves: the blue season, opening on 25th October 2025.

Marking his first solo show in New York in over five years, the exhibition gathers eleven paintings from three major series: Day and night / Fig leaf, rain / Day, and crowns. Each is a meditation on memory and identity. Across these bodies of work, Derakshani channels his lifelong pursuit of a visual language where history and modernity are one. The color blue has a rich history in Persian culture and beyond, oftentimes representing nobility and divinity. Blue also recalls the flow of the Caspian Sea and the towering presence of minaret rooftops. This exhibition explores the “blue season,” its associations, and invites us to look closer.

Born in 1952 in Sangsar, a small village in the North East of Iran, Reza Derakshani is a painter, musician and performance artist. Graduating from The University of Tehran in 1976, Derakshani continued his studies at Pasadena School of Art, going on to teach at the University of Tehran before leaving the country in 1986. Reza Derakshani’s work is featured in many public art collections including the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the State Russian Museum; the Museum Gunzenhauser, Germany; the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and numerous private collections worldwide. Derakshani also performed as a musician at festivals such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Montreux Jazz Festival among others. He now spends his time in St Petersburg, Russia.