Every image, before it represents anything at all, confronts the possibility of losing itself.

The works gathered in this exhibition come from different generations and artisticlanguages, yet they converge at a point where representation can no longer be taken as a stable condition. At times, the line approaches the figure; at others, it with draws from it. A stain may bring forth a face or absorb it into itself. Flowers, landscapes, and bodies are not the final subjects of these works; rather, they are situations in which painting continually oscillates between figuration and abstraction. The exhibition’s installation is likewise grounded in this instability. The works have been brought together neither to affirm one another nor to construct a unifiednarrative. Their juxtaposition seeks instead to open up relationships that might remainun seen when each work is encountered in isolation. A spare drawing may alter the way a neighboring painting is perceived, while a densely worked surface may render the silence of the adjacent work more palpable. What matters here is not resemblance, but the intervals that the exhibition makes visible. A Calamity Beneath the Sun is therefore less the title of a shared theme than a horizon for this encounter—a horizon in which no work is expected to complete the meaning of another or offer a definitive reading of the exhibition as a whole. Perhaps what brings these works together is not a common subject but an affinity in their language of drawing—an affinity that, while preserving the distinctiveness of each artist, gives rise to relationships among the works. Their proximity is not intended to prove these relationships, but to make them perceptible.
Hadi Momeni
Tehran-July 2 0 2 6