Hessam Samavatian paints two texts on two large canvases, thereby inseparably linking the two mediums of writing and painting. Even for people who cannot read Farsi, lines and curves in certain orders and relationships become writing, arranged in lines into a text. The painted poems, between which there is a good 1000 years, both deal with the motif of the curtain or its symbolism as a barrier that has to be overcome if one wants to penetrate to the truth that lies hidden behind it. Hessam Samavatian picks up the motif and transfers the formal qualities of the curtain to his canvases by not stretching them, thus alluding to the loose fall of the textile. On the other hand, he doubles the motif by prematurely and irregularly “hemming” a canvas and thus letting it end as a curtain and suggesting something behind it.
