The works of Reza Khodadadi present various aspects of assembling patterns and shapes alongside each other in mixed media. Continuity and colored material play an integral part in his art. His love for Rumi’s poetry adds a poetic narrative to his paintings. In this series “Heyrani va Zekr” (Bewildered Chants) the viewers face an abstract work which allows them to make a literal ‘reading’ of a visual expression. The Bewildered series is created with carefully drawn overlapping lines. These lines stand out in the background even though they are at times diluted, and their resemblance to straw and hay gives the painting the feel of a landscape. These landscapes seem distant from eastern landscapes yet during his creative process Khodadadi distances his work from these familiar scenes. The over-stacking and criss-crossing of lines confer on the painting a feeling of pattern. Straight lines begin to curl and give a feel of wind and dishevelment that can be fathomed as tantamount to bewilderment. The contrasting lines play an integral part in the aesthetics of this painting while the colors are from the same group (unless used for background spacing). Line segments are the simplest of visual ingredients, yet the artist, through detailed stacking and shading, has turned them into patterns. A sort of optical illusion is produced by this stacking that concentrates how they are viewed.
