How this painting defines how it should be seen. The rows of empty chairs divert the attention to us gathering in front of the painting. It is as if we gaze from outside anexity to an inside whose emptiness worries us. I think it is enough for us that we are standing back to look at a large painting. This way we step forward to look at the details of the chandelier. And things change: There are no details or chandeliers, only a couple of pale white dots and strips. I don’t think this ordinary experience is ordinary in the case of this painting. It is its raison-d’être which, contrary to most paintings in the series, is a presentation of the absence of presence. The relation of this painting to untruth is different from this one which ‘portrays’ and ‘defines’ the untruth or this one which is indifferent to the presence of untruth although the very existence of painting itself is dependent upon untruth. This painting by Mehdi Farhadian (despite the interpretation of its title, Abandoned Constitution) is an example of a painting extremely faithful to the painting’s very chance of ‘untruthfulness’.a
