German-Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian makes use of the universal language of abstraction to draw upon the human tendency of overlaying reality with structures and systems to apprehend what cannot be otherwise grasped. In her drawings, carpets and spatial thread installations, the artist deploys ready–made or hand-drawn grids and lines as a framework for her geometric elaborations. By allowing irregularities and deviations within this strict order, she acknowledges the ever-present and unforeseen surprises that make up our incomprehensible lives. Her drawings consist of layer upon layer of repetitive line structures in graphite, overlaid with patterns of geometrical shapes in a watercolor palette and shimmering golden details. These light distractions subtly break out of the rigid rational systems that try to contain them.

Appropriating the rich Iranian heritage of textile weaving, the artist interprets her visual vocabulary in a series of hand-knitted carpets. The minimalistic white knitted carpets are sourced from a manufacturer in Kerman, Iran, and function as the backdrop on which Redjaian prints and stiches minimal, long fine threads, presenting a thought-provoking dialogue between tradition and modernity, Middle-Eastern ornament and Western modernist aesthetics.

In her practice, Haleh Redjaian demonstrates how we tend to follow our overwhelming ways of life through guidance of comprehensible systems, curbing the chaos that exists in reality. The grids in her aesthetics symbolize the traces along which we exist, equally appropriating time and space while trying to adjust and finding our place within.