Regular accompaniment of text and abstract visual works requires knowledge and understanding of the medium of language and image. In “Touching at a Distance”, text has a key function both as a title or within images. The titles beside each work, categorize them in the mind of audience and help his mind in analyzing the works.
On the first floor of the exhibition, you see some untitled works. It seems that in this category, the reduced and minimalist forms sometimes follow the systematic geometric patterns and sometimes sit together with no specific order and pattern. It is as if the artist in this section has tried to show the element of rawness clearly to the audience, by using simple materials and combinations. In other part of the exhibition, we see the title of “A Long-Exhausted Summer” beside works with more complicated compositions. It looks as if the repetition in visual levels next to this title, takes the artist’s narrative from a period of time on the gallery’s wall.
In another part of the exhibition, we see “Archives” presented in two floors and two different forms, in both of which there is a subtle connection between the concept of the works and the connotation of the word “Archives”. In other sections, there are other titles such as “A Skew on a Sandy Shore”, showing an instant scene, or “Cluster of Stars” which is a combination of a poetic title and pleasant images. These all place some discrete pieces of the artist’s lived experiences in front of the viewer’s eyes.
Works of Sanei are not so concrete to be about a specific subject, nor are they so abstract to be de-conceptualized. Sanei narrates some blurry stories out of visual forms; stories that connect to the lived experience of the audience while being seen, and leave him free to fantasize.
