“I am not controlling. It’s the work that is controlling.
I am just a poor laborer :)”
There is a quiet intensity in the work of HADI TABATABAI. The work exists on the edge – chaos emerging from order, an infinity of perceptions realized from a singular structure. Challenging our realms of phenomenal perception, the experience of the work dislocates conditioned ways of seeing, affecting a sense of indeterminacy between physical and perceptual space.
Transitional space is this dynamic, the experience of the in-between. The perceptual ambiguity between the image of the object and ones experience reveals the structure of the work, in the moment of space between the affect of representation (image) and the effect of experience (space).
The wats:ON Festival supports the commission of new works, installed in the College of Fine Arts to transform the public space and experience of the Great Hall. The 2017 festival, SHIFT, started with a pitch I made to Hadi to go big – to scale up to create his largest work to date, to which Hadi replied: ‘Your idea of doing an installation piece is intriguing, but if you don’t mind I will respond to it properly by the end of the week.’
TRANSITIONAL SPACES is the result of Hadi’s reply. After all, scaling up, is just a matter of more string.