Yari Ostovany's show at Getchell Library

Marta Murvosh February 27,1987

Yari Ostovany's statement describes a world of never-to-be. A place where there is an eighth day. The paintings, with the exception of two, are mainly figurative. They narrate in a surrealistic manner subconscious memories that are not direct memories or even a recalled dream. Ostovany says, "I can feel a painting, but I cannot describe it, or constrict it to a particular memory."
Enjoy the visual tension between what the mind wants to see and what there is to be seen. The huge skies occupy most of the paintings' surfaces. The horizon line serves to act as a division between the figures' environment and the heavens above them. This motif is seen throughout and conveys despair reminiscent of fragments of Sapho: "I could not hope to touch the sky with my two arms."
The figures are almost insignificant in relation to the movement of space about them, and their very depiction gives them unimportance. Generally, the people are faceless and the men lack genitals, symbolizing a lack of identity and impotence.

The abstract paintings do not discuss new ways of breaking up space or painting technique, they describe layers of color built on layers. An experiment of what the pigment will do for the artist. The richest painting is one of two lovers, embraced, lying on sands of a dreamscape. They are among pillars of color, which, along with mountains and shadows cast on the ground, serve to break up the picture plane (surface of the painting) in an unusual way.
Ostovany, who immigrated to the United States from Iran in 1978 at age 16, draws much of his inspiration from his Persian background.