Mohammad Piryaee | "The Fig Temple": Parallel Circuit

Parallel Circuit is pleased to announce "The Fig Temple", a solo exhibition by Mohammad Piryaei, on view from October 9 through November 6, 2026.

Throughout Piryaei’s practice, architecture has repeatedly served as a framework for exploring unstable states between being and non-being. His interest in the history, literature, and philosophy of Iran and the East—and particularly in ideas of existence and nonexistence, decay and endurance—creates a continuity across his different bodies of work. Rather than emerging through the repetition of forms, this continuity lies in his persistent return to a single concern: making something that appears to be taking shape and disappearing at the same time. In "The Fig Temple", this concern unfolds through domes, scaffolding, stone lions, and the fig tree. The lions draw on the tradition of Iranian stone lions, forms that, for Piryaei, are closely connected to Iranian architecture and to ideas of steadfastness and endurance. These volumes are placed within red, latticed structures that render the boundary between inside and outside ambiguous. For Piryaei, this relationship recalls that between body and spirit: the question of how far what lies within a structure determines its outward form, and how far it is itself defined by that structure. Water, light, and movement become integral to the experience of the exhibition. The shifting surface of the water fragments the surrounding light and forms, bringing their reflections into the space of the work. At the center of the exhibition stands The Fig Temple: a tree with a long historical and ritual significance that also carries a personal presence for Piryaei, having stood in the courtyard of his studio throughout the years in which this body of work developed. The works in the exhibition have emerged through a continual movement between research and making. Painting, sculpture, and installation come together to form an environment that remains in flux as the viewer moves through it and as the relationships between volume, light, water, and reflection continually shift.

Mohammad Piryaei (b. 1984, Qom, Iran) studied handicrafts at the University of Kashan and received his MA in Painting in Tehran. His practice moves between painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, and has expanded over the years through a wide range of materials and methods, from ceramics and wood to composite structures and two-dimensional works. Within his process, research and study exist alongside a freer, more intuitive approach to making, allowing each body of work to develop its own formal language and structure. Piryaei’s most recent solo exhibition, There Is a City Beyond the Seas (2023), was presented at Dastan+2. His previous solo exhibitions include Odessa Steps (2019) at Dastan+2, The Red Temple (2017), and Lazarus Was Dead (2015) at Homa Gallery. His work has also been presented in group exhibitions and art fairs in Iran and internationally. In 2025, Parallel Circuit presented a solo presentation of his work in the Bawwaba section of Art Dubai. Piryaei has also participated with Dastan in Art Toronto (2024), Art Dubai (2023), and Artissima (2021).