ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YOULIN MAGAZINE
Marjan Baniasadi is showcasing 15 paintings at Dastaangoi Gallery that were developed during the pandemic while living away from Pakistan. These works explore the nature of colour mixing and elements of abstraction, melding together as the final compositions are a result of the artist's relationship with the colours red and blue. Her creative process remains unique to the close examinations of her Persian heritage, she visually translates observations of textiles into painterly line work and motifs, resembling intricate embroidery and weaving. Within each painting is embedded an understanding of the classical ancestral art from Iranian traditions, crystalised with a modern conceptualisation of abstracted mark making.
The viewer enters the brightly lit gallery space with a set of three paintings that can be viewed as metaphorical postcards from a particular painting phase of Marjan’s practice. The central image titled “Red and Blue I”, becomes an intersection of the neighbouring works “Red II” and “Blue II”, revealing remnants of previous painting phases evolving into a breakthrough visualisation that balances previous techniques and spatial explorations. These first encounters with Marjan’s work carry the initiation of her abstract techniques. The complexity of processing her ancestral identity, moving between various countries, and multilingual experiences, imbue her canvas’s emotive sensibilities.
There is a deliberate deconstruction of the allegorical nature of Persian carpets visible throughout the exhibition. But with each painting, the artist can be seen distancing herself from the weight of the heritage motifs into more ephemeral scapes. She explores her history by coming into contact with these textiles, as the painting technique retains the tactile nature of weaving, stitching, threading and embroidery by internalising its gestural motion as mimicked by the artist's hand as mark making and brush strokes. The balance and harmony are achieved by layering representational forms of floral motifs of Persian carpets dissolving to a point where they begin to completely blur into the background. Gently reducing their definition they begin to take the form of a colour field.
The artist invites the viewer into entering the picture plane as a traveller, each broken line marching to the motion of gravity or transmission of signals, creating a veil of colour over a scene hidden in the background. These fine white lines are spread across the colour plane as a ghostly foreground of white, red, green and faun layer over the colour composition similar to the role of the loom skeleton tying together on the Persian carpet. The triptych “Homeland”, holds the demarcations of a zoomed-in carpet with faded motifs and the dominating symmetry of the drafted line work in the foreground of the painting. The pushing of these contrasting visual elements creates tension between the painting and the viewer. The artist’s history is being told through these alignments of objects in conflict with lines as separate from each other. She reveals to the viewer the irreconcilable effect of carrying the past that is being bombarded by the present.
Her struggle with creating a sense of safety is personified through the blurring of the threads as if in motion, or the rough nerve endings of damaged tissue, the surface of the canvas appears to be treated like skin. This intricate detailing comes from a sense of control and familiarity with the medium for the artist. The scale of the paintings is intimate and conversational as she pairs them in a familial manner. The artist is self-aware, acknowledging the impact of travelling and changing countries of residence, leading to painterly journaling as seen in “Maytime”, “October” and “June II” paintings. The chronologically passing of time and changing of emotional states, can be viewed in these pieces as the changing colours from earthy greens to purples amplifies the transient nature of colour mixing.
The paintings “Red” and “Blue” are paired as a diptych, their formal variations seem infinite as each coloured object is surgically embossed with line work. Across them is “Red and Blue III”, which has similar colour composition but with a solid background and coloured central object. There are similarities in colour, while the contrast in composition remains naturalistic, with one originating from a place of memory and perhaps the other from feelings. In the same space, there is the largest painting titled “Blue and Red”, where the artist is constantly testing the compositional back-and-forth between the background and foreground, blurring the distance between them. There are moments where the electric blue form resembles an organic growth with moments of wounding sown together. Behind this blue object is a mirage of recognizable forms from Marjan’s previous paintings, further embedded under a wall of white noise created through fine line work in hopes to balance the two opposing scenes.
In pursuit of visual resolution, the artist achieves a lyrical harmony of colour and form. The struggle that emerges for the artist to keep balancing these various abstracting elements is authentic and sincere. A deep reflection on how we cope with processing life experiences while remaining vigilant in the present. Traversing these colour fields, the foreground feels like the present, and the background a distant memory of the artist. The paintings carry the journey and a sense of time that is personal to the artist’s evolving sense of self.
Comments