[Scene: darkness]
A voice in the dark: Nature ... Presence ... I'm applying the colours: cadmium yellow, magenta purple, cobalt blue, viridian green, scarlet red, white, white and yellow are very important, light.
[A light illuminates the scene. Large painted laths are pushed in one by one: sky, mountain, grass, rocks, people, cloud]
The voice: The sky. When the sky dries up, the clouds. When the clouds dry up, the mountain, purple mountain. When the mountain dries up, the big boulders. The sound of pebbles falling down. Strike. Move. Flow of water. Waterfall.
Clouds that seem to twist outside the present moment of the image. As if they are in the eyes of those who are sleeping there, and I am lying next to them for a few minutes. I look up. Why don't people look up? The moon. I stand on the edge of the painting, the edge of the grass, by the river, breathing the same air as those who are sleeping there. Those who, if you returned to this point later on, their river may have dried up. This may be the last time we see this landscape. This flow of the waters. These greens on the slopes of Damavand. And the poppies that were further away. And the rain that bewitched everyone, drove them mad. And a lone half-cut tree whose presence petrified all. The fire is nearby. Right where the sound of burning trees and leaves and the hum of singing and laughter melt into each other. Darkness is right back there, and if we take a step back or take a moment to blink or press a button on a mobile phone for a fraction of a second, darkness takes over the entire screen. Black, vacuum, shadow, wall, darkness. I hit the button again. Light.
[A table in the middle of the stage. A grater. Tomatoes. A person enters. Slowly grates the tomatoes.]
Her mind is elsewhere. In the purple of the mountains. Yellowness of the stars. White of Damavand. The twists and turns of Varangerood. And through the window of her eyes, I roll among the rapids and in the sunstroke meadows. I make up images that have never been made before. Images that I make for me, you make for you.
The tomatoes dry in their hands. Their open eyes do not blink. The wind does not move the leaves. The wet soil does not smell. Mountains become plastic. Rain does not wet the earth. The sun does not shine. The river does not flow. The forests catch fire. Flames rise from the curtain. Smell of wood and burnt plastic. A faint yellow light shines on the edge of the mountain. The burning curtain closes.
- Tara Fatehi Irani
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.
