In creating my painting, I have specifically used two visual patterns: first, the paintings of the Timurid era, from which I have borrowed the changes of scales, isometric perspectives, and, geometric divisions and combinations of multiple spaces. I have tried to rewrite these features in my own way; and second, R. B. Kitaj paintings, especially his works of the 1960s and 70s – not to mention the multitude of other artistic and non-artistic images that have accumulated and shaped our visual memories. Kitaj’s painting, more than the visual aspect (complex and acute compositions, as well as his method of combining geometric and organic spaces, abstract and representative, and displacement of positive and negative areas) by the variety of preparations he uses to talk and tell stories in painting, was inspirational to me. In these pictures, I have used some of the rhetorical strategies of his works, including adaptation, appropriation, quotation, distortion, and paraphrasing (which he himself obtained from various other resources), of course, with interpretation and “distortion” associated with my external conditions.
In this way, I have recounted various narratives: from some stories related to contemporary social life to biographical stories of myself or my friends. Some images do not refer to a special story- they can be considered lost stories their appearances have been abnormally transformed or reduced, so it is difficult to reconnect them with their origin. In addition to that, the image can continue its existence only when it finally loses its origin and goes to its audience in a disguised form outside the frame.
Ali Golestaneh. January 2022.