Darvish: Between States

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.

New York, NY – Leila Heller Gallery is delighted to announce the solo exhibition by Darvish, “Between States,” opening on 9th December 2025. 

“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.