Statement:

In front of the back wall

In her new series of paintings and sculptures, Dana Jafari moves back and forth between two and three-dimensional spaces. Like the riddling title of her exhibition, the works are a paradoxical representation of space.///

She uses many steps to abstract yet represent her subject, “walls.” Using isometric perspective, perhaps the most non-representational method of depicting three-dimensional space on a two- dimensional surface, she eliminates light and texture and purifies her forms into a series of austere panels in muted solid colors. While she flattens space to its extremes, she lets the forms impose their boundaries on the form of the frame. Her “walls” start to push away the standard rectangular frame and break it. In this way, her paintings become sculptural forms.

Her sculptural forms, on the other hand, are drawings in space. These protruded outlines demarcate empty space into an ambivalent in and out, back and front. Bringing her pendulum of meanings into full swing. Paintings become sculptures, become drawings. Space becomes flat, and surface becomes space.

In her previous series of works, “Inside the Wall,” Dana organized and categorized objects and materials meticulously. Categorizing things is one of the most fundamental ways of making sense of things. “In front of the back wall” seems to be going in the opposite direction, taking things out of their fixed categories and creating more questions than answers.

In the many years I have known Dana, she has been meticulous in everything she does. Her diligent ways may be her way of controlling what is out of our control: life, with its chaos of joy and tragedies. In the midst of this pandemonium, Dana delves deeper into her process of making, questioning the visible and the apparent, and searching for a hidden meaning between the dividing layers and solid walls.

Nazgol Ansarinia, 2024