Mohammad Reza Khalaji’s present series, executed in copper and aluminum, combines the abstract and figurative approach, and the remarkable technical quality and fine finish appear side by side with a crude, expressive texture. Erosions, fluxes, and burnt surfaces uncover a new sculptural idiom. The figures tend towards abstraction and the confining structures, a metaphor of traditions and social norms, are symbolized by the formless restraining constructions and the human feet trapped in them.
The solid, homogenous forms give way to more extended, open ones. The encounter with these forms requires the viewers’ active bodily participation. The pieces are extended in every direction rather than just vertical, and a transitional atmosphere between painting, architecture, and sculpture is dominant. The figures leave the precise, detailed, and highly finished earlier approach and move towards a kind of formless abstraction. The formless impulses open their way through the material. They reveal the inner qualities of the substance and demonstrate a prolonged procedure, similar to that of cell growth or rusting metal: the organic process of development and decline.

Helia Darabi