Before books, there was the voice. Before the voice, there was the image held up in firelight, and someone standing before it, deciding where to look.
SARAI Gallery is pleased to announce The Pardeh-Khān, a group exhibition bringing together four contemporary Iranian artists whose practices explore the ways images construct, transmit, and transform meaning. Curated by Nirvana Parvizimotlagh in collaboration with Aabee Bleue Project, the exhibition takes its title from the historical figure of the Pardeh-khān-the narrator who stood before a painted canvas and guided audiences through stories, directing attention, shaping interpretation, and connecting disparate scenes through the act of narration.
Drawing on this tradition, The Pardeh-Khān considers curating itself as a form of storytelling. Rather than presenting fixed conclusions, the exhibition foregrounds the relationships that emerge between artworks and the shifting meanings generated through their proximity. In an era defined by the rapid circulation of images and the fragmentation of narratives across digital platforms, the exhibition asks how stories are constructed, transmitted, and received-and what ethical responsibilities accompany acts of interpretation.
The exhibition unfolds across two distinct spaces, conceived as two contemporary "pardehs." Each room develops its own visual and conceptual language through the dialogue between the artists' works.
The first chapter, The Face and the Flesh, brings together paintings by Orkideh Torabi and Ali Zakeri. While both artists examine representations of masculinity, they approach the subject from markedly different perspectives. Torabi employs humor, exaggeration, and references to Persian visual traditions to reveal the performative dimensions of male identity. Zakeri's figures, often drawn from the world of boxing, evoke endurance, vulnerability, and the emotional weight concealed beneath physical strength. Installed in conversation, their works offer complementary and contrasting reflections on performance, authority, and fragility.
The second chapter, The Structure and the Flow, presents works by Parham Peyvandi and Shima Faridani. Peyvandi's compositions draw on memories of northern Iranian landscapes partially obscured by architecture and urban planning, creating spaces marked by distance, containment, and controlled visibility. In contrast, Faridani's paintings dissolve distinctions between body and landscape, interior and exterior, permanence and transformation. Together, their practices examine the tension between stability and change, structure and becoming.
Throughout the exhibition, meaning emerges not from individual works alone but from the spaces between them. Like the traditional Pardeh-khān, the exhibition does not seek to resolve interpretation. Instead, it invites viewers to navigate a series of relationships-between image and narrative, performance and vulnerability, structure and fluidity-and to construct their own pathways through the stories that unfold.
The Pardeh-Khān is organized by SARAI Gallery in collaboration with Aabee Bleue Project and will be presented at the Aabee Bleue Project space in Los Angeles from June 6 through July 11, 2026 (1700 S Santa Fe Ave, Unit 1626, Los Angeles, CA 90021, United States).
