A Review of Elham Yazdanian's Exhibition at O Gallery

Original text in Farsi by Amir Esfandiari

Translated to English by Omid Armat

O Gallery hosted an exhibition, titled "Dim Shape", from Oct 8 to 25, 2021 during which a series of works by Elham Yazdanian (b. 1979) were displayed. She started her career path in the early 2000s. Her works have also been displayed previously in several group and solo shows.

"Dim Shape" consists of artworks which Yazdanian produced during the last decade. The series includes paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures, created and arranged in different sizes and installations. Entering the gallery, the viewer first sees collages of texts, photographs, and pieces of magazines – some of which are art magazines – put next to each other. What they have in common is their obscurity, blackness, and their arrangement in pieces. Moving past the collages, viewers can see drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Looking at them from a distance, the black color and grey tonalities attract the viewer's attention as common visual elements among these works regardless of their different techniques and mediums. These dark pieces, which are arranged as separate segments, appear as if they are completing each other.

"Dim Shape" is a realm ruled by blackness. They are not looking to interact with light. In other words, they don't respond to the viewer's usual expectation about the confrontation between light and darkness. Blacks have conquered the whole space and have left no room for light and colors. Photographs are all covered in black, texts are vague, and whenever words and letters become clear, they are in the middle and come to no end; they cannot be followed from their beginning to the end, thus making it impossible to find out their logical sequence. They are designed to not show. The artist has purposefully damaged and colored them dark so as to make them resist being attached to any specific meaning.

Drawings and paintings take the same procedure even further. They are filled with corridors, half-opened doors, lone chairs, and furniture, which are apparently abandoned. Nothing but darkness is visible at the end of the corridors and on the other side of the doors, they don't seem to lead anywhere. They all start in the middle and towards the darkness. Chairs and furniture, free of any movement, are fading out in the dark. There are also ruins and remains of buildings which has no other fate than ending up in darkness.

Yazdanian continues her journey towards the darkness with her sculptures. These are pieces with irregular shapes, making up another part of the series "Dim Shape". Most of them are black or tend towards darkness, while others are made with rusted metals and subjected to decay.

Artworks of this series are faded out to such an extent that they are not interested in expressing themselves. Stairs, corridors, remainders, figures, etc. are all expressing extreme destruction, and are not looking to display anything from within the ruins. On the other hand, light greys and small points which are apparently lit are so few and lifeless that don't seem to be projecting light, but they actually revolt against themselves in a way that they will be destroyed and extinguished a moment later.

By creating "Dim Shape", Yazdanian has gone to the middle of darkness, from where she communicates. This is a context which getting into it results in getting lost in it; it leaves the viewer on a journey filled with remains after destruction.