When I finished the show, that rat was my favourite part out of all the paintings," says Fallah. "I really like the fact that he is kind of camouflaged. From far away the painting looks pleasant, it is circular and inviting and you are getting sucked into this vortex and then there is a dirty fat rat in the middle of it. It fights with the beautiful colours, layering and composition."
The painting is the showpiece
of Fallah's current exhibition, The Arrangement, up in the Project Space
in Dubai's Third Line gallery until the end of the month. It is one of a
collection of paintings each based on a seminal floral still life
masterpiece that has been reinterpreted and rearranged.
Using the technique of collage, Fallah scanned images of the original paintings and manipulated the image digitally before cutting out the flowers and pasting them on to create a layered composition. In some cases, he drew the flowers on paper before attaching them and in other places he painted directly on to the canvas. As well as these different techniques, the work contains many different materials - oil and acrylic paint, pencil, charcoal and digital prints.
There are, for a more careful observer, references to skateboarding graphics, revealing autobiographical details that begin to tell the story of this 33-year-old Iranian who was born in Tehran and ended up living and working in Los Angeles, California.
"In a way, yes, these paintings are a portrait of me. There are a lot of disparate things that I am putting together and trying to unify visually by making them all live in the same world and somehow making sense," he explains. "The art work is about the entire world, but it is my entire world. I could literally break down every piece and tell you how it came about."
So, from the floral ornamentation prevalent in Middle Eastern art to his use of borders, which Fallah explains are simultaneously a reference to the borders on Persian miniature paintings and a way of breaking up the space in a nod to minimalism, every minute detail is important.
"I also ran a magazine for 12 years, so I use Photoshop and Illustrator and page layout also influences my work," he continues, referring to the contemporary art magazine Beautiful Decay that he founded in the 1990s. "The different cultural and social references are all over the place. Some are high, some are low, some are ingrained in art history and some have nothing to do with art at all."
However, the beauty in Fallah's painting lies in the fact that it doesn't matter if all of these references pass you by. In the end, he has created a series of aesthetically pleasing works that anyone and everyone will find appealing.
"I want my paintings to be beautiful," he says. "Some people think that is a dirty word with art but I'm OK with people calling them beautiful, as long as there is something behind it, other things to keep your brain thinking."
And that's where the rat comes in. According to Janice Neri, the author of The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, the early still life paintings of the Golden Age often contained insects and other small creatures such as frogs and rats, firstly to offer surprise and delight to the attentive viewer and second for their visual complexity. However, they also had a deeper meaning, symbolising death and decay, and life's impermanence.
Using the technique of collage, Fallah scanned images of the original paintings and manipulated the image digitally before cutting out the flowers and pasting them on to create a layered composition. In some cases, he drew the flowers on paper before attaching them and in other places he painted directly on to the canvas. As well as these different techniques, the work contains many different materials - oil and acrylic paint, pencil, charcoal and digital prints.
There are, for a more careful observer, references to skateboarding graphics, revealing autobiographical details that begin to tell the story of this 33-year-old Iranian who was born in Tehran and ended up living and working in Los Angeles, California.
"In a way, yes, these paintings are a portrait of me. There are a lot of disparate things that I am putting together and trying to unify visually by making them all live in the same world and somehow making sense," he explains. "The art work is about the entire world, but it is my entire world. I could literally break down every piece and tell you how it came about."
So, from the floral ornamentation prevalent in Middle Eastern art to his use of borders, which Fallah explains are simultaneously a reference to the borders on Persian miniature paintings and a way of breaking up the space in a nod to minimalism, every minute detail is important.
"I also ran a magazine for 12 years, so I use Photoshop and Illustrator and page layout also influences my work," he continues, referring to the contemporary art magazine Beautiful Decay that he founded in the 1990s. "The different cultural and social references are all over the place. Some are high, some are low, some are ingrained in art history and some have nothing to do with art at all."
However, the beauty in Fallah's painting lies in the fact that it doesn't matter if all of these references pass you by. In the end, he has created a series of aesthetically pleasing works that anyone and everyone will find appealing.
"I want my paintings to be beautiful," he says. "Some people think that is a dirty word with art but I'm OK with people calling them beautiful, as long as there is something behind it, other things to keep your brain thinking."
And that's where the rat comes in. According to Janice Neri, the author of The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, the early still life paintings of the Golden Age often contained insects and other small creatures such as frogs and rats, firstly to offer surprise and delight to the attentive viewer and second for their visual complexity. However, they also had a deeper meaning, symbolising death and decay, and life's impermanence.
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