Mehrab Ramezani

In the tradition of Vanitas, the candle always refers to something beyond itself: the passage of time, the span of human life, or impermanence and decay. In Mehrab Ramezani’s works presented in the Continuum initiative, although not in the classical sense of Vanitas, the candle is used in more or less the same way. Whether standing alone or gathered together, the candles remain on the threshold of being seen; somewhere between being an object and becoming a sign, between material presence and a reference to something beyond themselves, somewhere between appearing and fading away.

The space in which the candles appear is compressed and shallow: a world in which distances have been shortened, and objects, rather than occupying an expansive depth, seem to draw close to the surface of the image. The limited, muted palette, together with the concentrated lighting, separates this space from the noise of the outside world and establishes a sense of stillness. Within this enclosed field, the objects seem to have been removed from the ordinary flow of time; they do not appear to be in the midst of an event, but rather suspended in a fixed and indeterminate state.

In encountering Mehrab’s works, their compressed and confined spaces, and what takes shape before us between presence and disappearance, stillness and passage, return us to that same threshold of seeing. Perhaps our collective experience over these years has also brought us closer to such an intuitive understanding: the experience of living amid war, mourning, and loss, and the sense of estrangement we have at times felt from the world and at times from ourselves. In such an encounter, Mehrab’s candles can simultaneously carry a sense of presence and absence; they can evoke mourning for something that has been lost, while also suggesting a light that, however limited, still remains in the darkness. Perhaps something close to what the poet Ahmad-Reza Ahmadi calls “weeping over limited light.” It may be for this reason that these works can feel familiar to us, even when we are seeing them for the first time.