One of Iran's foremost contemporary artists, Farideh Lashai, opened her exhibition, her very first in the kingdom, at the Albareh Art Gallery last week.
Using nature as her medium she explores the essence of freshness, growth and life through her highly abstract works.
On display is also her latest work in installation art which points towards social notions that have not changed in over a hundred years. Using film against the backdrop of one of her landscape paintings, Farideh revisits ƒdouard Manet's controversial work DŽjeuner sur l'Herbe or Luncheon on the Grass with images of the present.
In the original painting, first exhibited in 1863, Manet shocked the French public by painting a naked woman casually lunching in the park with two fully clothed men. Farideh investigates the same sense of disapproval that exists in her country today by juxtaposing the original and new images of figures sitting in the same pose. The difference is that Farideh's fully clothed woman has shed her veil in the company of men.
Farideh, 64, said: "My work comes closer to distillation ... basically I'm trying to get the essence out of everything. It is just baring everything and getting down to the roots of matter which is in its very pure form and is very glamorous in its original sense.
"What I am rendering through the tree or nature is a sense in the nature ... sense of movement, life and growth. There is also a whole interplay between heaviness and lightness ... feelings that I am taking out of nature."
Explaining her fascination with nature, Farideh said that humankind has immersed itself in the technical and unnatural aspects of life and distanced itself from the natural elements. Through her art she is trying to make that connection and close that gap.
She explained: "If you just walk on a tree-lined street, there is a possibility that you may often pass through without seeing any of the trees.
"However, once you take one out and put it in the museum as an installation you look at it differently and observe all the details that are so central for bringing back the relationship between human beings and nature.
"My paintings are a bridge to what nature has to offer which is freshness, life and growth."
Farideh's paintings are large and bold. They are not for a single look but something to view and mull over. Duality and contrast are permanent aspects of all her paintings.
This year she has shows planned in various parts of the world including New York, Hong Kong, Switzerland and India. She plans to take her experimentation with video art further by putting on a huge installation art show in Paris next year. It will involve combining the works and voices of Iranian singer Delkash and French singer Edith Piaf.
The exhibition at Albareh Art Gallery will run until Saturday.