Presence: Khayyam as Seen by Reza Lavassani

Presence: Khayyam as Seen by Reza Lavassani is on view at the Lajevardi Foundation in Tehran until the end of November 2026. The exhibition shows works from the artist's Khayyam series, made in 2026. Each one is a pinhole drawing on cardboard, 50 by 70 cm. Lavassani makes the image by pressing a needle through the sheet, hole after hole.

The poetry of Khayyam gives Lavassani a way to think about order, matter and impermanence. He does not set out to picture the quatrains or the poet. The foundation frames the show as a way of turning poetry into presence, the word that heads its title.

On the card, repeated perforations add up to geometric structures. Light falls on the rim of each opening and picks it out. From across the room a mark reads as a dot; close up it is an actual hole through the card. The strict geometry sits against a material that tears easily. The image shifts as the light changes and as the viewer moves in front of it.

Lavassani was born in Tehran in 1962 and studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran. Drawing is the base of his practice, which also takes in papier-mâché sculpture and illustration. In 2019 he showed the papier-mâché installation Life in the Iran pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. His 2025 exhibition Qaaf, at Dastan's +2 [Deh-Vanak] space, presented earlier pierced works on unfolded cardboard boxes.