Emphasis on Geometric Space: How Does the Captivating Part of the Paintings Become Hidden from the Viewer’s Eyes?؟

Rayka Milanian’s artworks mark a kind of return to modernism in Iranian art, a tendency that can be seen in the works of many artists who have sought to explore the common ground between Iranian artistic traditions and modernist perspectives.

According to Mehr News Agency, an exhibition of Rayka Milanian’s paintings titled “Again” is currently on view at Ba Gallery, opening on Friday, October 10.

The exhibition statement reads: "Flowers belong to every memory, and the soil of each recollection is rich with their constant and renewed presence. Flowers with every withering, promise to bloom again continue to grow and endure in Rayka Milanian’s works, their forms softened and details fading, yet still blossoming across vases, fields, and even women’s faces. The flowers in the “Again” series disregard Saadi’s verse: “The lifes of a flower lasts five or six days.” These flowers, through different periods and a symbolic lens, depict frames from the artist’s life intertwined with her moments of fading and renewal. “Again” is an invitation to a new gaze, a hopeful call toward rebirth."

On the occasion of this exhibition, artist and curator Hafez Rouhani has written a note, shared with Mehr News, which reads as follows:

“Most of Rayka Milanian’s flowers and vases in her recent exhibition ‘Again’ are beautiful, visually pleasing, even captivating. However, despite their apparent attempt to present themselves as purely beautiful and emotionally evocative images, the artist’s references to various periods of modern art history, and to the legacy of Iranian modernists, suggest that what we see is not a sentimental celebration of beauty. Rather, it embodies a non-sentimental modernist approach, one that resists direct emotional appeal. From this perspective, Milanian’s artworks in ‘Again’ evoke states of being rather than emotions.”

Milanian’s paintings seem to follow methods reminiscent of modernist artists; the influence of Cubism is evident. Perhaps this similarity arises from her use of fractured planes and vertical lines that divide the image into multiple surfaces. Although her works can be categorized within the still-life tradition, her visual techniques introduce rhythm and a sense of movement. The segmentation of space leads viewers to focus more on form than on subject, the flowers and vases themselves, creating a balance between subject matter and artistic interpretation. Thus, her paintings emphasize geometric space over emotional expression, leaning toward a formalistic and structural reading.

From this standpoint, any sentimental interpretation obscures certain realities of the work, it conceals the truly engaging aspects of the paintings beneath a layer of emotion that, in fact, does not belong to them.

This quality is especially clear in one of the exhibited works, where the artist minimizes the use of color, evoking the texture of a printmaking process. Here, the geometric quality is most evident—a perspective both Cubist and, at moments, even Expressionist.

Squares, visible in the backgrounds, recall the works of Yaghoub Emdadian and also hint at ancient symbolic approaches to nature linking the natural world with mythic and archetypal meanings. This body of work, therefore, distinguishes itself from Milanian’s previous periods through its emphasis on this symbolic-geometric vision.

Ultimately, Rayka Milanian’s “Again” series can be seen as a renewal of modernist exploration within Iranian art. Like many before her, she seeks to reconcile modernist form with Iranian sensibilities. The result is both visually striking and conceptually liberating: it demonstrates how manipulating form can transform the viewer’s perception of painting itself. This experiment with form may even outweigh the subject matter portrayed. In this light, the exhibition moves away from pure emotionalism and instead explores the potential of the visual language itself. “Again”, above all, feels like an invitation to such experimentation