Shahrzad Jahan | "Falling Petals in Glittering Snow": Zaal Art Gallery

 Zaal Art Gallery presents the second exhibition in its Focus Room series, “Falling Petals in Glittering Snow”, a solo show by Shahrzad Jahan, opening on March 7 and continuing through April 7, 2024. Her first collaboration with Dastan, “Falling Petals in Glittering Snow”, is her fourth solo exhibition.

“Falling Petals in Glittering Snow” takes off from a recent exhibition by the artist, “Bouquets of Glimmering Flowers in Fading Vases over Frames” (2023, Electric Room, INSIDE, despite). The latter focused on bringing together numerous studies over more than a year that the artist made based on and inspired by a single painting: the 1670s oil-on-canvas “Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase” by Dutch painter Maria van Oosterwyck (1630–1693). She had painted from the image repeatedly until it became unrecognizable. In her recent works, imagining her practice within a new context, she continues to explore memory, loss, and a journey in learning light from darkness.

Created within the setting of the artist’s discovery of a fresh environment, she takes in her new experiences and browses through her older memories. While following the same original inspiration, she aims to understand the different narratives light and its play on objects create. She recounts that “the practice of recreating a single painting has been more and more about the material feeling of days creating it,” as well as fresh experience in a new setting, including “how shadows have more blue in them, how snow sits and covers, how the light from the sun dances on the waters —looking at the moon in daylight, and the burn from air on my skin.”

Following the previous show, in “Falling Petals in Glittering Snow”, Shahrzad Jahan continues to use subtle ornamentations, this time wooden in contrast to plasterwork, to re-inhibit the space with an aura of domestic introspection. Creating ‘a room of one’s own’, she maximizes the isolation of her subjects and themes to revisit each of their unique attributes.

Shahrzad Jahan (b. 1995, Birjand, Iran) is a graduate of Graphic Design from Tehran University of Arts (2016) and Kingston School of Art (2020). Mostly focusing on painting, her practice also explores photography, printmaking, drawing, and video, and revolves around imagery and objects within systems of powers. Her work has been featured in several exhibitions in Iran, the UK, and the Czech Republic. A co-founder of The II Platform, she regularly sets up and curates exhibitions.