"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seatThat we must change for Heaven? "John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 242-244
SARAI Gallery is pleased to present "Red Noon", a solo exhibition of new works by Mehdi Chitsazha, marking his second collaboration with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from Friday, 11 to 25 July, 2025, at SARAI-Tehran.
In "Red Noon", Chitsazha continues his exploration of urban spaces that often go unnoticed. His paintings depict narrow alleys, quiet building fronts, and fragmented architectural details that evoke both personal memory and collective experience. These spaces feel familiar but altered, suspended between reality and dream. Through precise composition and a considered use of color, he constructs environments charged with emotion and quiet tension.
Drawing on his background in photography and film, Chitsazha reconstructs scenes through a careful process of observation, documentation, and transformation. While grounded in real urban fragments, his final works are imaginative compositions that convey a psychological landscape shaped by time, absence, and change.
Rather than indulging in nostalgia, Red Noon explores the complex layered relationship between urban space and human experience, between past and present, tradition and modernity. The architecture in his paintings serves as a silent witness to human presence, hinting at life without depicting it directly. Figures occasionally emerge, often children or stray dogs, but they appear distant and dreamlike, more like memories than active participants. Within this muted presence, memory lingers, and a quiet sense of unease takes shape.
Chitsazha's works ask not where these places are, but when we've felt something similar. In doing so, they become meditations on how cities inhabit us, shaping our sense of identity, time and belonging beyond physical bounds.
In "Red Noon", Chitsazha continues his exploration of urban spaces that often go unnoticed. His paintings depict narrow alleys, quiet building fronts, and fragmented architectural details that evoke both personal memory and collective experience. These spaces feel familiar but altered, suspended between reality and dream. Through precise composition and a considered use of color, he constructs environments charged with emotion and quiet tension.
Drawing on his background in photography and film, Chitsazha reconstructs scenes through a careful process of observation, documentation, and transformation. While grounded in real urban fragments, his final works are imaginative compositions that convey a psychological landscape shaped by time, absence, and change.
Rather than indulging in nostalgia, Red Noon explores the complex layered relationship between urban space and human experience, between past and present, tradition and modernity. The architecture in his paintings serves as a silent witness to human presence, hinting at life without depicting it directly. Figures occasionally emerge, often children or stray dogs, but they appear distant and dreamlike, more like memories than active participants. Within this muted presence, memory lingers, and a quiet sense of unease takes shape.
Chitsazha's works ask not where these places are, but when we've felt something similar. In doing so, they become meditations on how cities inhabit us, shaping our sense of identity, time and belonging beyond physical bounds.
