Extraterrestrial exhibition is a selection of art works by Babak Etminani, Mahsa Karimizadeh, and Shaya Shahrestani which was held in November 2012. The works were selected by Babak Etminani and were showcased in his gallery. The collection was based on a scientific-intuitive approach and was a success in line with the previous efforts by Etminani to ponder the mysteriousness of the universe and its uniqueness from the microscopic level to the galaxies and the black holes.

The collection of Revelation by Etminani includes works created in acrylic technique on canvass and is a continuation of the Gray collection; a homogeneous surface which is similar to lead and made of vacuum on whose surface organic circles appear which sometimes look like unicellular organisms and microscopic particles and sometimes look like volcanic lava. Unlike the Gray collection, this time we see inclusion of blue, yellow and red onto the colorful surfaces. As in the past, these works take the mind to the depth with an extraordinary power; in Etminani’s works there is no trace of abstraction, because forms are not only not detached from nature, but quite contrarily, depict the invisible layers behind the nature with a direct, immediate, and cogitative power, namely those layers which transcend the nature itself. It seems we have become microscopic and can traverse into the depth of quantum and colored quarks and plunge into the depth of the internal discovery. The revelation by Etminani, although carried out individually, represents a universal and common language, the unity between the part and the whole, internal and external, the micro and macro world, and the human being and the universe are the elements before him which move beyond the language and geographical borders. The artist’s intentional and selective paintings are in a minimal position, and as color and material in his works behave somewhat spontaneously and in accordance with nature, it is because of this absence of conflict in the process of painting that some critics theorize his style in the framework of Post-Painterly Abstraction, though efforts to place him in the conventional styles seem to be useless, because the accidental elements in his works are in accordance and harmony of function with chance and contrast in nature, rather than a painting technique, and they are the result of an immediacy, not a self-made product.

The works by two other young artists are also put beside Etminani’s works in terms of ontological obsessions and in a rhythm based on harmony. Mahsa Karimizadeh’s works are statues made of fiberglass and oil paint titled “the Curvature of Space” which are hung up on the wall in black and red colors. Taking into consideration the form and title, the works touch upon the concept of curvature of space as a result of gravity and creation of black time and energy in black holes and the growth of existence from where there is obviously absolute inexistence. Shaya Shahrestani records everything in nature in the framework of oil paint on fiberglass, the curves and bumps on the metallic surface which has a texture similar to the landing of meteorites and their impact on the soil and it is also similar to fossils found in nature. Beyond these formal and symbolic associations, simultaneous with inclination to abstraction, the focus is on the content of the work and recording the immortality of all universe, a theory whose function in all the world of physics is based on recording all events revolving around the third orbit of atoms nucleus.

Extraterrestrial is a bridge between awareness of the audience and the complexity and superiority of the nature which turn artists into unassuming mediums who touch upon the innermost, undeniable, communal and universal part of human beings: A reality which is invisible because it is extremely overt, just like a writing which becomes an illegible text when it is very close to the eyes.

Mahsa Farhadikia