O Gallery presents “Several States”, a collection of paintings by Minoo Emadi (b. 1984 Tehran).

1. The world we live in follows fundamental principles and our knowledge of this world is based on these principles. Laws such as gravity, direction, perspective, depth, and dimension. At the starting point of learning to create images – without knowing their presence – we apply these rules and follow the principles of this world. It was impossible for me to continue painting under these rules. There was no problem-solving, and the lack of challenges in the work process left no excitement to continue. Creating an independent, self-sufficient and self-referential image of this world was the beginning of a new pleasure. Applying a grid at the beginning of image creation refers to this independent world, which provides the basis for redefining concepts such as perspective, gravity, depth and dimension, and cognitive forms. In the meantime, the conversation with modernist artists of the first half of the twentieth century, along with artists of the modernist movement in Iran, has been one of my pleasures of this period.

2. Structure of the image as the place of occurrence is the most important part of the formation of the work. The context of geometric abstraction of some works stems from my interest in architecture, geometry, and spatial visualization in general.

3. As a yoga practitioner, I am interested in physical and mental challenges. The fragmented organoids – in the role of biomorphic elements – come from concentrating on different parts of the body when performing asanas.

4. Decoding Cubist and Futurist images have encouraged the creation of an independent visual language. The formation of a linguistic structure – like any language that consists of the smallest units, alphabetic letters, then the word, and then the sentence and the text – increased my attention to form as the smallest unit of the visual language. Next, the transformation of literary word plays and arrays as puns into their visual counterpart showed me another aesthetic aspect. In shaping this visual language, I assess every element, including letters, symbols, emojis, and other cyberspace suggestions. The study of semiotics in relation to this visual language is one of my interests for my future projects.

5. Graphic design has always been attractive to me because of its “directness of expressivity” in form, color and idea. Elimination of painterly behaviors and texture is applied in graphic design to shape a more direct encounter with the form and structure in the work.

6. About the work process – the beginning of any work is the experience of imagining a state – often several states that have a psychological burden. Without any obstacles or censorship, I instinctively sketch the space of my mind. From my previous experience and to avoid the hazards of sentimentality in the final image, I have come to the conclusion that this stage is just a spark, to begin with. Then the subject fades and the concerns of the medium themselves arise, where for me structure and form take precedence over content. Structural analysis of modernist works of art and study of key articles of modernism have been effective in solving the problem. In the meantime, sharing “practiced states” and “recurring themes in the history of art,” such as bathers, becomes an interesting idea to redefine.

7. The creation of this trail of studies that began 5 years ago, was impossible without the dialogue in different intellectual circles.

-Minoo Emadi