Darius Yektai was born in 1973 in Southampton, New York. He studied science and art at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and received his bachelor of arts degree in Art History from the American University in Paris in 1996. Yektai has shown internationally in London and Dubai and has had several solo shows in New York and in the Hamptons including a solo survey of his early work at guild Hall museum in Easthampton in 2003.

He lives and works out of his home and studio in Sag Harbor. He grew up in a cultural home of art and artists, with this Greek – American mother, and his father, Mouncher Yektai, an Iranian who emigrated to the US after the Second World War, was a prominent Hamptons AbEx painter. Darius has picked up some traits from his father but pushes even further into what is now completely his – own.

Darius’ most recent body of work is bright, colorful, with oil and acrylic paints and thick. He’s creating sculptural paintings that can’t be read from left to right, they need to be examined from surface to base, from section to section, and then overall as an encompassing whole.

Interestingly, Yektai has a degree in Art History, not painting. Unfettered by the constraints that years of traditional training may do to yoke an artist’s expression, Yektai is free to explore his subject matter and experiment with his materials. Every series is its own investigation and
Yektai has demonstrated that he is both sincere in his inquiry and also unafraid of failure.

In Yektai’s water lilies, which draw inspiration from the ponds by the artist’s Sag Harbor home, Yektai begins by laying down paint in a thick impasto – deft, economical, richly sculptural approximations of Monet’s blurry coloristic scenes. Next, he lays the painting flat and floods it with thousands of dollars worth of varnish, submerging the image in a frozen resin lake. Finally, after the lacquer dries, the slick, transparent surface becomes a ground for additional marks, such as a smear of pink or a loosely drawn willow branch. (These final gestures, intriguingly, are often like water lilies themselves: flowers floating upon a limpid pond). The result is a series layers that are themselves in conversation. You see the image with double, or
even triple vision – a rich and vibrant conversation of which you the viewer are either a participant or not.

EDUCATION

1998 – 1999 Studio Art, San Diego State University.
1994 – 1996 BA Art History, American University in Paris,
1991 – 1994 Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Darklight, Duck Creek Art Center, Springs NY
2020 RESINance, The Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY
2017 Darius Yektai, KEYES ART PROJECTS, NY
2015 Touch Thoughts, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton NY
2014 Two Weeks in Umbria, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY
2013 On Country Ground, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY
2009 All I Know About Love at Thirty-Six, Part 2, LTMH Gallery, NY All I Know About Love at Thirty-Six, Part 1, Salomon Contemporary, NY
2006 Salomon Contemporary, Easthampton, NY.
2003 Darius Yektai: Survey 2000 – 2003, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY. White Grass, Sara Nightingale Gallery, Water Mill, NY.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 Drive-By-Art, New York organized by Warren Neidich
2017 Yektai, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
2015 Selfies and Portraits of the East End, Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, NY
2012 Thanksgiving Collective
2012, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY Watercolors, Phillips de Pury & Co., New York, NY, October 1 – 19,
2012 2010 Thanksgiving Collective
2010, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY Tehran-New York, LTMH Gallery, NY
2009 Recent Acquisitions, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY Before We Let Go…, Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY In Stitches, LTMH Gallery, NY, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody Iran Inside Out, The Chelsea Art Museum, NY, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath Selseleh Zelzeleh: movers and shakers in contemporary Iranian art, LTMH Gallery, NY, curated by Leila Heller and Dr. Layla S. Diba
2008 Conference of the Birds, Berardi and Sagharchi Projects with LTMH gallery, London, England The Annual Hamptons Show, theFIREPLACEproject, curated by Klaus Kertess
2007 Sex and Sensuality, Salomon Contemporary, Easthampton, NY
2006 M*A*S*H @ art basel Miami, curated by David Hunt 2005 Hampton’s Artists: Then and Now, Remy Toledo Gallery, NY Large Paintings, Hampton Road Gallery, Southampton
2004 Fresh Paint, Hampton Road Gallery, Southampton
2002 Spring Exhibition 2002, Clark Fine Art, Southampton
2001 Re-emerging Artists, Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton
1997 All-California Juried Exhibition: San Diego Museum of Art

AWARDS
Guild Hall Museum’s annual members show
2010 Best Representational Work – Benjamin Genocchio
2008 Best Sculpture – Linda Jablonsky
2002 Best in Show – Amei Wallach