I took the name of the exhibition from the title I gave to a collection of my works. "Seven Temples" ; a symbolic name for
a series of six paintings in 165 x 165 cm2 size, painted with oil and acrylic techniques. A collection of six temples... with
the seventh temple missing.
My intention is to pose a question that imposes the outer wisdom to think. We must pause, comma by comma, before
each work, to consider what is happening in the artist’s inner world, apart from the outer world that constantly shouts,
and why is one temple of the seven missing?
I have always been and still I am looking for sacred time, sacred space, sacred behavior.This view goes beyond the
individuality of a people, a tribe, and an ideology for me. The elements I use in my works, such as squares, domes, lines,
letters and numbers, etc., give me an opportunity to express my visual mentalities in a general setup.
My mental journeys are not necessarily related to a real thing. If we take these mental journeys of the artist and analyze
and limit them with geometry and mathematics and the logic of two plus two equals four, nothing remains of art.
I believe that something has always been lost in the outer wisdom, if values are limited to a single person or a small
group, something naturally remains incomplete somewhere. It becomes the seventh temple which is lost; so conflict,
disagreement and war arise. What do we protect and what do we miss, or in fact we lose and do not take care of it?
The artist can invite the audience to a universal perspective, so that the human senses that claim to develop ethics and
knowledge, become like a boundless and timeless ocean where every creature can drink from that blue ocean and
quench its thirst, because the ocean is not small and limited; it is vast and, like the sun, an infinite source.
This message is very simple.
Ahmad Nasrollahi
January 2025