Untitled 2009

Curator: Here we have an untitled work from 2009 by Mostafa Dashti, rendered in acrylic. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: A storm, perhaps? Or a sky full of birds fleeing some unseen cataclysm. The somber palette evokes a sense of urgency, a kind of primordial anxiety. Curator: Observe the composition, how the textural density at the bottom, almost volcanic, gives way to an ethereal, dissolving sky. The gradations of value create a dynamic tension, a visual push and pull that invigorates the picture plane. Editor: Absolutely, and those birds, or what I interpret as birds, seem to represent the human soul. The multitude taking flight… leaving behind earthly concerns for…what, exactly? Freedom, maybe? Or fear? Curator: Semiotically, we might consider the negative space, those areas where the paint thins, or disappears entirely. These intervals are just as crucial as the impasto passages; they activate the surface, creating rhythm. Editor: The massing of dark figures does suggest something fundamental about humanity— the flocking instinct perhaps, or our constant navigation between earth and sky, shadow and light. Migration seems very central. Curator: Do you find that this is the tradition of Abstract Expressionism or do you find Dashti forging a new syntax within it? Editor: Both, I suspect. This harkens back to certain existential anxieties expressed by the Abstract Expressionists but uses its visual symbols – particularly the birds – in a very specific and powerful way, charged with its own symbolism. Curator: Indeed. The way the medium—acrylic—is deployed allows for both delicate washes and areas of intense, almost sculptural build-up, contributing to the painting's layered meaning. It is worth investigating. Editor: I’ll leave with that. To me it reflects anxieties that come when cultures change; what to leave and what to bring. The tension between darkness and lightness becomes less a matter of the painting and more an expression of our times. Curator: And I must reflect on how the formal relationships shape how it makes us reflect on these notions of anxiety.