Be All Eyes

O Gallery presents "Be All Eyes", a collection of paintings by Aylar Dastgiri (b. 1988 Tehran), marking the artist's second solo show with the gallery.

In the collection on display, Aylar Dastgiri studies the diversity of color and form through the reconstruction of landscapes and exploresfor the similarities between the body of nature and the human body in the context of an image. While referencing theatrical stage design, she examines the role of light in reviving the world around us and analogously through the formulation of a spatial illusion tries to place the viewer in the middle of her paintings. Colors rise from the darkness of the background and develop in layers; hollow layers that deliberately remain in two-dimensional space to emphasize the theatrical qualities in the paintings and artificially represent the landscapes. To further invite the viewer to step inside the painting, the artist has opened up the ground and left the bottom side of the frame untouched. Hand in hand with the viewer's mind, these paintings can create new images and turn into semi-documentary narratives. We see nature through the eyes of the people in the landscape. We go from one person's eye to another, we move around in space, the space around us takes on a new shape and time becomes fragmented - the time when the sun shines, the time when the river flows, the time of applying paint to the canvas and the time of us standing, here, now.