In Limbo - Exhibitions

Tehran, no. 16, Barforoushan Alley, Iranshahr St., Karimkhan Zand St.

29 May - 10 June 2009

 Adel Younesi is a young artist who has come a long way in a short time. He is gradually transforming from a technical painter to one who focuses more on the elements and symbols of everyday life, absorbing them into his personal life. In his recent series of works on exhibit at Assar Art Gallery, Younesi depicts a foreign yet familiar world on large canvases. Foreign, because many of them seem to be taking place in a bizarre realm and principles of nature such as gravity, night, day, water and air are presented unnaturally. All this he has pushed to such a poetic and magical state of realism that the horizon has been forced into arc and the balloon-like flowers have taken control of the space around them. These elements are separated from the familiar and seem to have recreated The Little Prince's planet. On the other hand, the people, cars, animals and other subjects are all familiar and belong. The people in Younesi's works are either busy with their everyday lives or looking at an unknown spot with their backs towards us. Are they alive or dead? Are they conscious of their destiny or are they in limbo in a metamorphosed world? Younesi has brought the social issues of his generation to the canvas. Ecstatic yet uncertain, he has presented us with a world which recounts our problems in a more candid way without making them seem less ambiguous or more tedious. And that's no small feat.