The most interesting thing about Afshin Chizari’s prints, is the lower right margin where the date is written. Dates vary up to three years and obviously the prints are felt to have more in common with the dates than with their title (Dolly Zoom) or pages of Marcel Proust’s novel presented as exhibition statement. Their connection to the works is even harder to grasp. Everything, including the dates and the way works are installed, ask of the viewer to dig out at least a narrative (instead of a story) from the images which might not happen since every now and then an image jumps out of the narration. It appears that the artist has tried to remind us of the mutual experience of human feelings we all share in private states. It must have been much more effective if he had chosen a newspaper column to write something–definitely shorter than the part chosen from Proust’s novel–to underline this mutuality. This all indeed come into mind when you ask for more than technically powerful pieces which look good on the wall of your living room. The works chosen for the exhibition, though full of memory and familiar and meaningful to the artist himself, repeat one sentence to their audience: I am merely personal.
