Press Release
O Gallery presents “Rash,” a collection of works by Ali Moammeri (b. 1983) curated by Mojtaba Amini. The literal meaning of the term šaṭḥiyyāt, the plural of šaṭḥ is movement. The word is used when there is an ecstatic utterance that may be outrageous in character and it is usually associated with a sense of overflowing or outpouring; it's a complicated form of delirium caused by inner agitation. Moammeri's works are delirious and applicable to šaṭḥ; although he lives and works in nature, the painter depicts the opposite of the landscapes that he sees. The black color overflows from his soul and gives us a dark and obscure representation of the scenery. His take from nature is a nature changed by man. His work scrutinizes "The Evil" and the "Common Attention Deficit Disorder." The starting verse of his exhibition "Rash; a tree that is not fruitful and bursts into flames by itself - Black." is a metaphor for the common disrespect for the environment. In order to read the "Black" landscape and nature in Moammeri's paintings and especially "Rash", we have to refer to the German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. In both "The Monk by the Sea 1809" and "The Shore and the Wrecked Ship 1806", a monk is standing on the threshold of the Black Sea, representing Friedrich himself. The Black Sea as nature, a savage, rebellious and destructive force, in which the painter refuses to step into as the realm of death. "Everything at a distance turns into poetry; distant mountains, distant people, distant events; all become romantic." - Novalis Moammeri's paintings are delicate hybrids between abstraction and the real. They are so close to the subject that in no means do they seem romantic; they are rather placed within the catastrophe. In the Untitled polyptych painting, he has portrayed a burning landscape, a kind of vague stillness in the absence of any movement, with a sense of sadness and grief as the realm of death. In the "Rash" collection, the guardrails and the traffic signs above them are a metaphor for the threshold of the Black Sea. Friedrich is standing and seagulls roaring above the dark are warning the man not to tussle with the horrifying nature. The aftermath of this battle has already been portrayed in "The Shore and the Wrecked Ship". - Mojtaba Amini
Selected Works
