“Hiding, undoing, covering, erasing, vandalizing, I recently realized that these are the primary ways I know how to paint. And maybe that’s how all the different works I make are connected.”
—Kimiya Mirzaei, Spring 2025
O Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Kimiya Mirzaei (b. 1998 Tehran), whose process-driven practice offers a compelling counterpoint to the results-oriented rhythms of contemporary life. Her work foregrounds the act of making itself, through a mechanical yet handcrafted process that embraces the possibilities of material transformation over time.
The works on display continue her early practice, which began in 2021. She finds interest in paintings she encounters online and through engaging with their framed details that are reformed into abstract pieces she draws her inspiration.
It is not always clear which parts of the paintings are driven by chance and which by choice but, in each piece the artist takes a distinct path. Her approach generally follows two recurring processes. In one, she begins by covering the surface with scraps available in her studio, then sprays paint over it, allowing areas of bright, sharp white to emerge perhaps to cover them later in the manners she describes as her ways of painting. In the other, she engages in a more confrontational process with the surface—usually paper—applying color only to scrape it away, peeling back layers of paint and paper. She describes these processes as the endless battles she is constantly trying to overcome.
Through these evolving processes, Mirzaei explores a range of visual and emotional possibilities, emphasizing the role of uncertainty, repetition and the unpredictable unfolding of the creative act. Her work invites viewers into a space where meaning is not fixed but continually shaped by the process of making itself.
I see Kimiya Mirzaei as a receiver of cosmic forms. In her recent body of work, she has tapped into a world that echoes a purity akin to what one could find and visually experience in the celestial realm, a kind that simultaneously mirrors diaphanous forms on Earth at a great distance. All the fine layers of grains that she meticulously accumulates bring her images to a point of perfection in a manner that seem to be generated by otherworldly forces and not of her hands. The images are highly refined without any traces of her hands conveying immediate abstract emotions. It is as though they are induced from somewhere deep within her, again from a great distance. In them reigns a heavy silence as one could experience in the vastness of ether or else in the depths of the sea. The process with which she makes this work is directly related to some of the techniques used in photography by Dada artists such as “Schadographs” by Christian Schad and “Rayographs” by Man Ray. These techniques are of different types of photograms made from random arrangements of discarded objects placed directly onto light sensitive surfaces. Kimiya’s process similarly involves the use of discarded materials she lays down as stencils, shaping her abstract forms by spraying many layers of paint over them. Like a great Dadaist, Kimiya seems to be intrigued by the informality of her materials and the automatism of her approach, which in turn add layers of meaning to her work. 
The tones and colors of this body of work have a delicate softness that is in contrast to another set of work Kimiya simultaneously is engaged with. There seems to be a need for her in this exchange that is not arbitrary. It is as though the intensity of one pushes her to release a force into another in an entirely different manner, resulting in differences that are wondrous and aberrant. The modes of application differ starkly: where in one the paint is accumulated, in the other she peels off the paint in segments. What connects them, on the other hand, is an abstract form of lyricism where the use of randomness, the discarded, recycled and repurposed materials are all actively played out.
I find the enigmatic compositions of Kimiya to have a clarity and force that is singular and unique. She is clearly feverishly walking the path of madness in painting that is a marvel for us all to witness: now and in the years to come.
- Raha Raissnia, Spring 2025