I look at the subject from a perspective as if I'm rediscovering the truth. I like to have the audience with me in this discovery.
Mohammad Khalili (1971) studied his BA at the University of Tehran, (2004) and his MA at Shahed University, Tehran (2009). His first solo exhibition was in Farokh Gallery in Mashhad (2005) but ever since he had many solo and group exhibitions in or out of Iran. He has also taught at the University of Tehran, College of Fine Arts, Tehran University of Art, Practical Art, and College of Fine Arts at Semnan University.
The themes of Khalili's paintings include the dull stillness of objects, places, and landscapes that changed over time and have layers upon layers of a forgotten life on them. The artist induces a feeling of isolation and loneliness by putting things that we may normally pass by in the spotlight. "I look at the subject from a perspective as if I'm rediscovering the truth. I like to have the audience with me in this discovery." By focusing on natural or artificial subjects that have been abandoned, Khalili isn't trying to just do a descriptive study of those subjects or only to represent them but tries to rather force the audience into critical thinking about the prevalence of technology and our inconsiderate behavior towards nature.
In the "behavior of silence" series (2010) Khalili depicted some unreal views of the roadside scenery from a traveler's perspective. His latest works show stranger, colder, and more distant landscapes: watch towers, masts, barbed wires, cement walls, and metallic structures sometimes accompanied by human figures. His landscapes look more like an abandoned military-industrial area, an abandoned prohibited area that can provoke the feeling of a wasteland "after the end". His other series include "you must be drowned from now on," (2011) "nowhere," (2015), and "the silent side" (2018).