We Keep Reviewing - Part: 2

Khezri's latest works are an extension of his earlier series, We Keep Reviewing, which was exhibited in August 2019. The first series was very well received during this year's online Art Dubai event, even though the physical program had to be canceled to comply with social distancing protocols of the Covid-19 pandemic. We Keep Reviewing series are due to be presented at Art Dubai 2021. We Keep Reviewing: Part 2 illustrates the artist's continued explorations through the voids and openings of the same all-boys school, recording different facets of the ongoing dynamic between the adolescent figures and their rectilinear, somewhat claustrophobic educational environment. Again, daylight plays a key part in the visual narrative, albeit this time with a muted presence. The striking chiaroscuro between those lucent traces of sunshine and the deep shadows cast on faces and figures has been largely replaced by a rather dull balance which results in a dim, indirect, moody light. The shorter the school days become in these frames, the more the viewers and the schoolboys both long for brightness. Through their solids and voids alike, Moslem Khezri's frames each visualize some kind of presence: the presence of light; human presence within architecture; the vibrations of shared emotion in space; the teacher's invisible but palpable authority; the thick presence of regulations; time's constant presence, and the incessant birth of memories; even the stealthy presence of the audience. One of the main features of this series is the increasingly ethereal quality of colors and forms. Most of the works are done in pencils and watercolor, tools which inherently yield such qualities. But the painter has gone even further to strip his oil paint technique of the common impasto effects and richness, to create an effect similar to watercolor or Copic markers; reminiscent of Turner's masterful, misleading oil painting depictions of the vaporous dominance of dim sunlight and fog over his landscapes.