Untitled 1997

Mostafa Dashti made this untitled painting, and looking at it, I can almost feel the push and pull of the brush, or maybe a knife, scraping and layering the paint. The palette here is moody, almost monochromatic, various shades of gray, like a storm cloud gathering, or maybe an industrial landscape at twilight. I'm really drawn to the texture in the lower part of the painting, it looks thick and almost sculptural. I can imagine Dashti working on this, adding layer upon layer, maybe wiping some away, building up this rich surface over time. It makes me think about the physicality of painting, how the artist's body is involved in the process, the way they use their hands to manipulate the medium, how that gesture, that act of applying paint, becomes a form of expression. It's a conversation, you know? We respond to each other's moves, across time, in this ongoing dialogue that we call art.