Kiarash Alimi | "A Walk in the Prairie": Dastan's Basement

Dastan presents an exhibition of new works by Kiarash Alimi titled “A Walk in the Prairie” at Dastan’s Basement. The exhibition will open on Friday, 31 July, 2020, and will be on display for public viewing until August 14. His third solo exhibition at Dastan, this presentation features 51 pieces of watercolor, oil, and ink paintings on canvas and paper.

Currently living and working in Tehran, Kiarash Alimi (b. 1985, Tehran) is a visual artist, writer, and the chief editor of Zamineh, a free content viewing digital platform focusing on visual arts. Kiarash Alimi studied painting at Tehran School of Visual Arts. His paintings reveal an extreme reduction of form, a fluid handling of color, and a profound self-reflective approach that foregrounds his explorations in painting as “a mental activity” and “thinking through doing”.

The current exhibition, along with its introductory presentation, “Mars Over Lake” (2019) at Electric Room, marks a transition in Kiarash Alimi’s visual language. In a move away from representation and figuration towards abstraction and economy of means, the visual imagery of this series is characterized by a subtle manipulation of tones and a mastery in gentle, gradual gradation of color.

The pieces in “A Walk in the Prairie” are mostly formed by color gradations, fluid and sinuous brush marks, and a decentralized perspective, resulting in delicately harmonious compositions. Each color, in this series, is treated as a distinct variant, building up a dialectical relationship with its adjacent color. Such continual subjectification of the colors to the climactic differences of their neighbors, results in the final alterations of their solipsistic individualities.

In his paintings, Kiarash Alimi employs bands and blocks of color, blurred at the edges and afloat in the space. His swatches, color wheels, and calibrations favor gradation and process documentation over delineation, defying rigid identities and restrictive subjectivities. Tendered with a fluid handling of color, the artist’s visual signifiers turn into a constant self-reflective inquiry, posing questions not necessarily demanding any specific answer.

Artist’s Statement

He stood in the prairie and yet again claimed his own solitude. He had climbed up from among grass and shrubs. He could now see the limits of the plain from all sides, or at least he so thought. Each slender leaf of grass was a thread, sewing the prairie to the sky.

There, a bit further down below the birds and trees, he saw how, standing in the prairie, all is but visible.