Darius Yektai was born in Southampton NY, in 1973. 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 his Greek-American Mother, and his Father, Manoucher 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 laid on 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.
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.
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
2022 Waterlilies, Sholeh Abghari Gallery, Marbella, Spain2006 Salomon Contemporary, Easthampton, NY.
2021 Waterlilies, The Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor NY
2020 Darklight, The Art Center at Duck Creek, Spring 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
2003 Darius Yektai:Survey 2000-2003, GuildHallMuseum, EastHampton, NY.
White Grass, Sara Nightingale Gallery,Water Mill, NY.
2022 Contemporary Group Exhibition, Rarity Gallery, Mykonos, Greece
2020 Drive-By-Art,NewYork organized by Warren Neidich
2019 Thick And Wet,The Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY
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-NewYork, 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, EnglandThe 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’sArtists:ThenandNow,RemyToledoGallery,NY
Large Paintings, Hampton Road Gallery, Southampton 2004 Fresh Paint, Hampton Road Galler y, 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
A Drive-By Art Show Turns Lawns and Garages Into Galleries
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Exploring Layers to the Core of Darius Yektai
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Darius Yektai Waterlily Series is on view at Grenning Gallery beginning June 5, 2021 and through June 20th, 2021. This catalogue includes essays from Laura Grenning, Lloyd Wise, and Anthony Haden Guest, and high resolution images shot by local photographer, Gary Mamay.
Unbounded by rules yet informed by art history AND his family's tradition of Abstract Expressionism, Darius Yektai's latest work is at once an homage to tradition while also being a journey of experimentation. The Grenning Gallery is pleased to welcome the Latest Works of Darius Yektai (b.1973, Southampton, NY) as he returns for his third annual Solo Show. Yektai's urge to paint is innate; an affinity for the medium surges through his veins, as he is the son of the longest-lived Abstract Expressionist from the East Ends mid-century modern art movement. He is a direct descendant of the Action Painting movement, with a shared obsession with the materiality of paint that Pollock and DeKooning embodied out here in the Hamptons.
