Niloofar Rahnama

Still Air is about the stillness caused by the repetition of behavioral and intellectual habits.

It’s about immobility, which is portrayed in a non-narrative language through the image of stacked objects and polished memories in pastel backgrounds.

Jean-Yves Langlais’s note, director of the Cite International des Arts- Paris has written the following note on the series.

When painting flows, when the painter shows that she has facilitated the flow, does it mean that the painting itself finds its way and the painter simply accompanies it or is it that paint, according to the force of gravity and like raindrops falling on glass panes, weeps or splatters on the canvas?

When a painting brings together scattered objects with such refinement, as though an invisible string runs through them or presents them as a vertical fresco and sweeps the scattered objects, as remnants of a feast, to the corner of the room where the painting is, why another coat of paint should cover and somewhat conceal them? Is the purpose to show or to conceal?

Niloofar Rahnama, brings forth persistent and vivid memories from hidden crevices of her mind to today's light. Behind and beyond the outward appearance of her paintings, she explores and strives to give us a glimpse of the dance of profundities. Like a patient archeologist, she unwraps multiple layers of ribbons around our sad lives and makes bouquets of flowers from our memories.

Do not be misled: here we are not dealing with withered or melancholic flowers. No! These paintings, subject to our appreciation of plastic arts, our present day knowledge and interpretation, speak to us with succinct eloquence with a dash of clarity and taste about whatever is alive within us; mysterious.

November 2015