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Mehran
Danaie
In the first
look, the
Landscapes
appear to be
plain scenery or
curtailed
versions of a
beautiful
nature; colorful
and jubilant…
They are painted
in a notebook
with markers,
like a diary
kept of far-off
dreams about
other places.
Bright surfaces
with details of
pebbles and
weeds, floating
clouds and
ploughed lands
resemble a
flamboyant
dream. Most of
the sceneries
are seen from an
angle higher
than horizon,
carrying along
the light
feeling of a
gentle flight
over remote
intact lands, as
felt in dreams.
In the process
of personal
interpretation
and turning
fluid
imagination to
solid images,
however, some
paradoxes come
to attention.
There are some
discords here
and there and
not everything
looks as
expected and not
all details
comply with our
experience of
nearness and
distance,
earth’s wrinkles
and horizon
line. Very
subtly, such
anomalies
disturb and
manipulate the
initial sense of
security we feel
when we front
familiar
scenery.
The spreads void
of human in a
mishmash of
intact nature
and vague
imagery of
abandoned
constructions
that are somehow
assimilated in
the heart of
nature, as well
as manufactured
constructions
that appear to
have returned to
their origins
–overflowing
embankments, red
dusts raised in
the sky,
cavernous
cliffs, uneven
sea horizons,
indistinct top
and bottom
edges, scarce
colors of sky
and earth –
after all are
not as neutral,
harmless and
tranquil as they
appear to be in
the first place.
The small size
of the works
intensifies the
perplexed and
ambiguous
feelings one
experiences in
encountering
isolated and
unknown places;
the small scale
of each image is
equivalent to
the farness of
locations we do
not know much
of. It is the
kind of
bafflement and
ignorance that
stings the mind
yet brings along
the sweet sense
of the moment of
remembering a
dream on the
spur of a blink;
like the
patterns that
are formed
behind our
eyelids but
disappear
rapidly, leaving
the possessive
desire of our
greedy eyes to
seeing better,
clearer and
larger
unsatisfied.
Each image is
like a small
window to a
different place.
The small size
of each painting
emphasizes our
distanced
relationship
with it and
keeps it as the
far,
unattainable,
desirable exotic
landscape as it
is; a volatile
image that fades
in and out.
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