NEW YORK, NY.- Leila Heller Gallery opened the solo exhibition by Darvish, “Between States”.

“Between States” explores the hypnagogic state between dreams and reality. The works carry a whimsical yet profound sense of a world suspended. Figures, landscapes, and emotions hover in the lightness of their own present being. This reflection is not just an aesthetic choice – it is a philosophical one. It invites viewers to experience a kind of perceptual weightlessness, to hover between understanding and wonder, and to remain fully present. The freedom he seeks to embody in both his painting and performance is driven by transcendence of these respective mediums, a type of liminal levity, where he invites us to float into our own equilibrium by simply being.

While still rooted in the Western figurative tradition, his paintings are looser and more expressive, with a physical language. The movement of performance meets brush and canvas. This not only demonstrates commitment and confidence in his decades of artistic mastery, but also embodies the fluid dream states he is occupying which cultivate the fluidity and blurred lines between performance and painting.

All of this circles back to the artist’s experience and movement through different, and in some ways, oppositional cultures. His youth in a lush suburban enclave on the edge of Boston was contrasted by his many trips back to Iran to visit what revolution had forced his family to leave behind. All of the places he has traveled shape an interior world that becomes the engine of the work. Ultimately, what we encounter are inner worlds made visible – lush, chaotic, humorous, and unsettling – mirroring the layered realities we are all navigating. “Between States” is the essence of transcendence and the freedom to join ideas.

Darvish Fakhr is a half-Iranian, half-American artist whose work ranges from painting to movement art. In his practice, he amalgamates disparate cultures by overlaying various concepts and aesthetics through interference, which can take the form of movement, paint, or text. Throughout all his work, he fuses Western techniques with Eastern philosophies, such as incorporating Persian poetry into oil paintings or converting a skateboard into a flying carpet.

He calls his movement art “gentle civic disruptions,” inspired by the practice and image of the whirling dervish. In these works, much like the interference found in his paintings, he cross-pollinates aspects of his Iranian heritage with his Western upbringing. He challenges preconceptions by mocking stereotypes through humor and invention and uses lightness and concepts of flying as metaphors for accessing ideas of freedom.

He has exhibited and performed internationally, included at The Armory Show in New York, and is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. He currently lives and works in Brighton, UK.