Deborah Schamoni

Hoseini’s dramaturgical plotting of space, both in the composition of the paintings and in their placement in the gallery, yields dreamscapes where bodies float between abstraction and figuration. The large panels simultaneously evoke the shapes of abstracted human forms and familiar architectures, while the shadows cast against the walls highlight the theatricality and fluidity in their relationship to the viewer. One becomes strangely body-conscious encountering the work – simultaneously connecting to the human scale of the panels while being alienated by the flatness of their surfaces.

A sequence of small-scale paintings elaborates on the oneiric experience of this spatial encounter. It begins with an abstracted architecture in which a checkered floor is legible but other elements are vaguely defined, and Hoseini’s signature warped bodies are set at a distance in a landscape. As the sequence progresses, the perspective of each successive painting gradually recedes to reveal more of the architecture while the figures diminish. As we study each painting, the effect is one of sharing our position as viewers with a ghostly third-person observer within the space of the paintings themselves – a voyeuristic experience of looking and being looked at as the definition of inside and outside shift.

Text: Green Art Gallery, New York
Photos: Green Art Gallery, New York
Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, New York, Dubai