There is no original human experience and everything has been plunged into the depths of non-significance. In his “The Possibility of Real Life’s Openness to Experience” exhibition, Majid Biglari approaches the notion of experience in a fearless fashion, considering it a ruinous landscape that cannot be recounted properly, thus parts of reality has taken the shape of fantasy or perhaps a mere possibility. “The Possibility of Real Life’s Openness to Experience” has been arranged in several continuous and intermittent forms, all of which are based upon the artist’s personal perception of the outside world, events, and realities, with a certain dose of fantasy: three boxes and two stands with pendant flag-like things; ten structures in which the possibility of the destruction of several buildings by a foreign object is considered; three structures called “Blood,” “Ash,” and “Tree,” on each of which books are set on layers of paraffin; and preserving sealed documents with paraffin, installed on the wall.
“The Possibility of Real Life’s Openness to Experience” is a new link in Biglari’s chain of thought and his artistic career, formed in continuation of his “Mourning” series, albeit in a broader perspective. Unlike his earlier series in which each piece was made with an abstract approach to past realities, personal and collective experiences, and newsworthy events, now each piece of artwork is based on fantasy, possibility, and the role of chance in shaping past and future events. In this series, the untold narratives and unseen images are presented as obvious truths. In this way of embodiment, the role of materials is symbolic (flags), mournful (paraffin), and ironic (books), and any way of making archives is considered banal and trite, for the original, authentic narrator is absent.
For the most part, Majid Biglari’s works are fragmented, put together from the recollections, rooted in personal and collective events, and left behind as monuments. The concept of narratively and the position of the narrator in Biglari’s previous series such as “Mourning,” “Testimony,” “Regarding the Pain of Others,” and “The Experience of Dishevelment” were passive and second-hand, whereas “The Possibility of Real Life’s Openness to Experience” is narrated in an active manner.