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Curator: Looking at this striking artwork by Bahman Mohasses, the mixed-media collage seems to conjure something primal and unsettling, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Absolutely, it's like a fever dream made manifest. That creature rising from what looks like burnt umber earth—the visual weight is really bottom-heavy. Curator: Let's break down some of the formal elements. The stark contrast between the neutral, almost washed-out background and the intensely patterned figure. Editor: Patterned figures usually suggests safety or warmth, or something domestic even, but here...it doesn’t quite work. Something’s a little sick about it, though I can't put my finger on it. The overall color harmony is making me strangely tense. Curator: Mohasses clearly exploits visual tension, challenging our perceptions through this contrast and discord. Semiotically, it suggests conflict... Editor: Definitely discordant. The shapes aren't quite representational, not exactly a bird or beast I recognise. Its body seems fragmented, incomplete... Almost as if he captured this image through an old damaged telescope that was smashed after capturing the scene. Curator: Perhaps alluding to fragmentation and alienation? Editor: Or transformation… A before and after perhaps. Curator: And how about the use of collage? Pieces, seemingly unrelated, joined together... Do you get a sense of any unifying principle or cohesion in the compositional structure? Editor: Visually I like the contrast of smooth to rough that the work uses, or how the artist is doing a lot with color relations—the juxtaposition of the two distinct fields, or perhaps more literally horizons in terms of its color palette—but thematically? The whole thing is perplexing! I want to keep puzzling over what it says, what’s just beneath the surface here. Curator: Agreed. I feel we've only scratched the surface ourselves. There's something hauntingly beautiful and tragically strange, which just captivates your gaze, like coming into awareness that the old gods don’t always mean well, or maybe at all. Editor: Yes, maybe it will all be worth it once the dust finally settles!