Untitled 

Curator: Here we have an untitled still life; the artist is Bahman Mohasses. What’s striking is how modernist painting intersects with figuration to offer us these rather compelling, stylized forms. Editor: The geometry and then BOOM: pomegranates. All ruddy and plump, they're shouting of a gorgeous summer's heat. Curator: Quite right. Consider, though, the planes established: the geometric division of the space by a horizon line and these rectangles, one in bright pastel, another darker. It is very architectural, grounding the more organic shapes. Editor: Architectural like… a stage? And the pomegranates are the drama kids! I like how they huddle, like gossiping aunties. Makes me wonder if this wasn’t painted from memory – like a feeling instead of what the artist saw. Curator: A memory perhaps filtered through an almost sculptural approach. You note their grouping, but examine how each fruit also manifests as a self-contained formal element: an ovoid volume given subtle gradations of color. Note, too, that photography factors into the work's origins. Editor: Okay, photographic as a kind of memory aide or to lock-in the light and shadow for each separate shape—those gorgeous pinky hues bleeding to deeper crimson—as little studies almost, or postcards from the artist's own orchard. Curator: An astute reading. We are offered planes of color, simplified forms and intense color contrasts as much as we are given depictions of ripe fruit. Editor: Maybe it's about transformation? Like a simple form transmuted through art to become a potent memory? Curator: I appreciate your interpretive synthesis there, focusing less on direct representation. The artwork instead is an arrangement—one that employs symbolic resonance—an arrangement as compelling as any traditional subject matter. Editor: So… less still life, more still *living*, then? Works for me!