Untitled 2009

Mostafa Dashti made this untitled painting, and I can only imagine how it came into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist. The dominant marks and color palette, oranges and blacks, suggest the act of painting itself. The paint looks relatively thin in areas and in others it becomes heavier and more present. That one big smear of orange across the middle reads like a gesture and communicates a specific feeling. It's a generous sweep of pigment, perhaps a nod to Helen Frankenthaler's soak-stain paintings. All artists are in an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. I love that painting is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed readings.