Mahmoud Meraji Commentary

The Drawers - Mahmoud Meraji Commentary written by Julie Oakes

exhibitions in the drawers in the gallery commentaries artists catalogs contact

Ethnic Convergence

There is an old world craftsmanship in Mahmoud Meraji's unique visions. He has the hand of a fine drawer that can lay rightful claim to the glory of admiration at his talent and ability to depict. He uses his technical ability to support a far more inaccessible narrative. Like the story-line of dreams where the connections are hard to make but the sense is embedded in the memorable impact of the visual, so his figures and their situations veer away from logic to enter a more instinctual realm. He uses a vocabulary of images that seem to possess romantic underpinnings.

The work is subtle and classy, intellectual and yet fresh. His use of colors illustrates his taste. It is never too much, sparingly doled out to accentuate the detailed rendering. Mahmoud uses repetition in a symphonic sense, subverting rhythms in favor of a melody that forms agreeable successions and arrangements of shapes and movements. It is a classical melody with attention to form lending a general effect of balance while the emotions are distant and collected. Mahmoud Meraji is graceful in his depiction. He is discrete with a gentleman's manners. And because of these layers of meanings, not quite revealed, but refined and cultured, the work touches the finer aspects of our own connoisseurship. It invites us into the Meraji realm, one of good breeding where the origins of drawing are accomplished and can thus enter into higher conversations.

If the iconography is not always clear, it is because there is a learning process in place and Meraji is teaching us how to see his world as he offers a respite from the clarion perspective of contemporary depersonalization.