Untitled 1989

Mostafa Dashti made this untitled watercolor, and you can see he’s got a real knack for capturing the way light moves across things. The colors feel like faded memories, all soft blues and sandy yellows. Looking closely, you can almost feel the water soaking into the paper, the way the pigments spread out. The paint is thin, almost transparent, letting the light bounce through, which gives everything this ethereal quality. Notice how he lets the colors bleed into each other, especially in the sky, creating these soft, hazy shapes. It's as if he's inviting us to see not just with our eyes, but with our feelings. That rusty old car wreck is like the star of its own quiet drama. Dashti’s work reminds me a bit of Ed Ruscha’s, in the way he finds beauty in the mundane. But where Ruscha is all about the cool detachment, Dashti feels warmer, more human. It’s a good reminder that art isn’t always about answers, but about asking questions.