SARAI Gallery is pleased to present Blue Noon, Mehdi Chitsazha's new solo exhibition of oil paintings and first solo collaboration with SARAI Gallery. Blue Noon opens on Friday, September 8, and it will be on view until September 22, 2023.
Mehdi Chitsazha (b. 1973) has been preoccupied with the notions of the urban environment and modernism for the past twenty years, exploring the social and urban realms through various media including writing, making documentary films, and, more recently, painting. He is particularly interested in revisiting these spaces through the lens of childhood. Nostalgic, richly textured, and sometimes claustrophobic, Blue Noon is a tapestry of contrasts and contradictions we often visit in a typical aging neighborhood in populated cities in many developing countries: a rather tight array of old and newly reconstructed building facades of various heights and the traces of time that appear like bluish veins running underneath plastered walls and through brick gaps; shiny stone finishes versus bare bricks, humble rectangles versus elaborate window panes, and the utility poles and wiring that visually connect all this wild variety caused by an unstoppable urban sprawl. The only presence belongs to little figures, a lonely child or a stray dog wandering around through chaotic, winding alleys and streets. Their less-than-excited expressions seem to channel the drowsy mood of long middays many youths living in these busy neighborhoods tend to be familiar with.
Mehdi Chitsazha (b. 1973) has been preoccupied with the notions of the urban environment and modernism for the past twenty years, exploring the social and urban realms through various media including writing, making documentary films, and, more recently, painting. He is particularly interested in revisiting these spaces through the lens of childhood. Nostalgic, richly textured, and sometimes claustrophobic, Blue Noon is a tapestry of contrasts and contradictions we often visit in a typical aging neighborhood in populated cities in many developing countries: a rather tight array of old and newly reconstructed building facades of various heights and the traces of time that appear like bluish veins running underneath plastered walls and through brick gaps; shiny stone finishes versus bare bricks, humble rectangles versus elaborate window panes, and the utility poles and wiring that visually connect all this wild variety caused by an unstoppable urban sprawl. The only presence belongs to little figures, a lonely child or a stray dog wandering around through chaotic, winding alleys and streets. Their less-than-excited expressions seem to channel the drowsy mood of long middays many youths living in these busy neighborhoods tend to be familiar with.
