For centuries, still life painters have made metaphors for morality and mortality as well as celebrations of the future and reflections of the past by evaluating contemporary culture through the objects that saturate our everyday lives – focusing on objects that tell stories of our homes.
In “Time Regained”, Ali Rezvani characterizes his still life paintings as a sort of optical instrument, allowing the viewer to better understand the world in which he has lived in the past two years. The collection on display is a self-study for the artist on how his identity is constructed; how desire, intelligence, jealousy and self-deception wrestle within him and through his relationships; and how happiness and pleasure are still possible for him through his awareness and engagement with the environment in which he finds himself. Crafted by sensibility and awareness of the changing social and political dynamics of the global pandemic and its aftermaths, the collection on display sharpens our vision of our own highly mutable, troubling world.