Statement:

Yasaman Nozari's practice began with a curiosity about understanding human behavior through landscapes and patterns. In this period, which has shaped her work, she discovered two opposing forces: texture (nature) and rhythm (man-made).///

For Nozari, rhythm is controlled and predictable, while texture is wild, visceral, and impossible to completely capture in a painting. Nozari aims to achieve a middle ground between these forces.

She uses layering to create compositions that balance the two. Layers introduce elements such as transparency, history, opacity, time, merging, and fragments. Her work is a process of investigating second-hand images and the materiality of paint, focusing on how surfaces evolve through her interaction with them.

In other words, the subject of her work is the process of its creation and her search for that liminal space. Different Kinds of Incomplete, Nozari's first solo exhibition with Ballon Rouge, is an apt title as a reflection of both these paintings and Nozari's practice.

In this series, she aims to achieve a collage-like feeling by producing different types of imagery on a single canvas, like a chimera. One recurring object is a cup. For Nozari, the cup is a metaphor for painting itself - a space to be filled, a study on light, surfaces, shapes, reflections, the everyday.

A man-made utilitarian object used rhythmically but always with a new texture and perspective. The paintings represent the collision she seeks in her work, and her aim to act as a mediator within her abstract world.

Currently, she primarily works within her own language. She starts from various image sources, such as images she has worked from throughout her practice, other painter's paintings or her older paintings.

Firstly, she works on the initial layer very quickly using acrylics, then proceeds to draw, gradually understanding each step. In Nozari's process, she always uses pieces of masking vinyl to cover the surface in order to leave some traces of the background in the next layer.

The vinyls are reused until their adhesive cannot hold any longer. They carry layers of paint from previous works and these traces make unconscious, accidental gestures.

In such actions, the vinyls, these small fragments, become both conceptually and formally intriguing in terms of creating texture and rhythm in and between her works. The process mimics the passage of time and the creation of history or memory.

The use and exploration of these fragments act as a reminder that total continuity is usually, perhaps always, an illusion. That fragmentation is often a reflection of her own memory and memory itself; almost as if she is creating an ecosystem of incompleteness; patterns so abstract, repeating and completing each other.

These patterns can be read like a dance score or a text that invites the viewer in. And, these rhythms and textures mirror our world and the way we all individually interpret it.

Yasaman Nozari (b. 1991, Tehran) is a Painting graduate from the department of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran.

She currently lives and works in Gent and is studying masters at KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts Gent. Her paintings have been previously featured in a number of solo shows and group exhibitions.

Her solo exhibitions are: “An Ocean Swallowed" at Kornfeld Gallery, Berlin, 2025 (upcoming), “The Sun Kept Setting" at Dastan’s Basement, Tehran, 2023, “In Motion” at Dastan’s Basement, Tehran, 2020 | “Swinging” at Pirsook Gallery, Shiraz, 2019 |“The Hum” at Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, 2017.

Some of the group shows she participated in include “Joy of Painting” at Dastan’s Basement, Tehran, 2021 | “Episode 4”, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, 2019 | “Badha” at Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, 2018 | “An instant mark: on painting”, Knack gallery, Tehran, 2018.