Mirror In The Sky
Duo Installation with Abel Hartooni, Lumen, O Gallery, Curated by Dora Jalili, 2022
Shahrzad Jahan and Abel Hartooni’s collaboration originated from a shared passion of color. Color study and its potentials, not only as a method to create an image but as the primary material of painters, was their starting point.
In Abel’s works, transition from undertone or other color qualities to another enables the viewer to visualize the progressive process of thinking during the artwork creation. Gradual blurring of the boundaries of colors in gradient in his works is not necessarily done to convey a certain notion. On the other hand, such transitions refer to inter-identity statuses and uncertainty. Perhaps the improbability and lack of certainty explains why the artist picked sky and its ever-changing colors as an ephemeral entity.
Suspension as well as the transitory aspect of Hartooni’s works shape a silent dialogue with Shahrzad Jahan’s installation of white chrysanthemums. Floral arrangements and their importance in political relations have always been a major part of her studies. Here, a composition of white chrysanthemums which are frequently put on graves of the dead is vertically installed. This shift in perspective was inspired by the photos of flowers set on mud- covered graves on the mobile phone screens. This installation represents a standing memorial of flowers which gradually transforms and withers before the eyes of the audience which keeps changing until the last moment of the exhibition.
This joint project was not only done to make a collaborative piece, but to form an original impression in space. Other works of Jahan and Hartooni are installed on the opposite ends of the room around the installation of white chrysanthemums and hanging rolls of Hartooni’s paintings. This atmosphere is the result of a few months of collaboration and communication of these two artists and more than anything else is the outcome of a the transformation of a common unspoken experience.