Fariba Roostaei

The Iranian, Hamburg-based artist Fariba Roostaei comes very near abstraction in most of her expressionist oil paintings, and without their titles we might be incapable of grasping a work’s figurative subject. This is as it should be: the foremost features of her compositions are the striking, radiant textures of the paints. Certain areas are dense with tightly controlled brushstrokes, while elsewhere long, broad areas of color are full of mysterious shadows and folds. As these formal features congeal into broader shapes and details, Fariba’s subjects slowly come into focus, though they always suggest an underlying uncertainty, compounded by canted and oblique points of view.