Welcome to The World, Retold, an online contemporary painting exhibition at HICHAA Gallery. Six works by Navid Zafar Alizadeh, Ali Razghandi, Nasrin Sadeghi Bajd, Neda Azimi, Samira Toosi and Iman Sadeghi offer different points of entry into a shared question: when we look at an image, how much do we see of the world, and how much of our own experience? Move between the paintings, explore their individual pages and make your own route through the exhibition.
About the exhibition: between seeing and telling
The World, Retold approaches painting as a way of revisiting experience. Its common ground is neither a particular landscape nor a predetermined story. The connection between these six works lies in the different routes an image can open between reality, memory and imagination. One painting may offer a familiar point of recognition; another may engage you first through colour, rhythm or a relationship between forms. That change in how you encounter an image is part of the exhibition’s unfolding experience.
The curatorial approach brings distinct visual languages into a conversation while preserving their differences. These works have been selected to raise questions about one another, leaving room for more than one interpretation. Looking here extends beyond the encounter with a single painting. An image you have already seen may change what you notice in the next; returning to the first may bring a previously overlooked detail into view.
Your online exhibition route: from the unconscious to landscape
Think of the six paintings below as six possible stops. The suggested sequence begins with Unconscious Illusions and closes with Ghamameh, carrying the conversation towards landscape. You can also begin wherever your attention settles. Follow the work that holds your gaze, then consider how it relates to the others. The notes that follow offer prompts for looking: they are curatorial readings, leaving space for your own response and for each artist’s account of their work.
Navid Zafar Alizadeh | Unconscious Illusions
Begin with Unconscious Illusions by attending to the relationship between shapes and the associations they prompt. Give your eye time to move through the image before looking for a clear story. Where does something seem familiar, and where does recognition become uncertain? Within this exhibition, the painting opens onto experiences that resist a tidy sequence. When you return to it, consider whether a particular form or relationship has acquired another meaning.
Ali Razghandi | Entanglement
Entanglement offers a way to explore the relationship between a whole image and its parts. Take in the painting first, then follow the connections between colours, lines and layers. What seems to hold the surface together, and where does your attention pause? Seen after Unconscious Illusions, this work invites a comparison between different encounters with complexity. The significance of that comparison develops through the time you spend looking.
Nasrin Sadeghi Bajd | From The Green Presence collection
The selected work from The Green Presence collection brings the route closer to an encounter with the familiar. When does an everyday element become visible again, beyond the habit of seeing it? Look at the relationship between the principal element and its surrounding space, then compare that experience with the visual density of the preceding works. The change in pace is one of the relationships this selection invites you to explore.
Neda Azimi | A Narrative of the World
The title A Narrative of the World returns us to the exhibition’s central question: how can an image tell a story? Try following the movement of your eye between colours and forms before seeking a linear account. What comes forward, and what seems to recede? A narrative may emerge through connections, intervals and associations. Those relationships can take a different shape for each viewer, allowing the experience of the painting to remain open.
Samira Toosi | The Sparkle of Silence
The tension within the title The Sparkle of Silence offers a starting point: how might a moment of radiance coexist with quiet? Carry that question into the relationships within the image. Attend to what draws your eye and to what seems to remain in reserve. This stop in the exhibition invites a slower pace of looking, one that you might take with you when returning to the other paintings.
Iman Sadeghi | Ghamameh
Ghamameh (A Very Big Cloud) is the final stop in the suggested route. Here, consider again the relationship between an external world and an inner experience. Does a landscape give us something to recognise, or can it also become a space for memory, feeling and association? After viewing this painting, return to the opening work. Compare the two encounters and notice how the images in between have changed the experience of beginning.
How to visit this online painting exhibition
Start by browsing the artworks below and allowing time for your initial response before reading the details. Select a painting’s name or image to open its individual page, where you can view the image and the recorded artwork information. Then return to the exhibition and compare two works through a common question: how does the rhythm of looking, the presence of something familiar, the relationship between colours or the feeling of distance change?
The actual dimensions of each painting are recorded on its artwork page. Keep those differences in scale in mind when viewing the exhibition on a screen: images displayed at a similar size can represent paintings with very different physical dimensions. Before leaving, revisit one work and note what has changed in a second encounter. An online exhibition takes shape through these pauses, comparisons and personal choices.
