The Garden of Undiscovered Passages

Bavan Gallery in Tehran presents The Garden of Undiscovered Passages, a solo exhibition of oil paintings on canvas by Sanam Sayehafkan, from 2 to 19 October 2026. The opening takes place on 2 October from 4pm to 8pm at the gallery on Abdeh Street. It is the artist's second solo exhibition, after Labyrinth at Bavan Gallery in 2021.

The gallery lists three works on its exhibition page, all in oil on canvas. The Unfinished Feast, dated 2025, is a diptych measuring 170 by 240 cm overall, with each panel 170 by 120 cm. The Garden, an Uncertain Hour, dated 2026, measures 100 by 70 cm. Pink Midnight, also dated 2026, measures 130 by 100 cm.

In her statement, Sayehafkan describes the paintings as places where different possible realities cross. Some figures are reduced to uniform silhouettes, held between presence and absence. Materials lose their usual behaviour, so that a piece of cloth stands as stiffly as paper and a shadow follows a logic of its own. An image released with the show combines purple-leaved plants, a patterned green cloth and dark, cut-out shapes cast on a pale wall.

The statement traces the series to a river that was heard from beyond the high walls of a garden and never seen. Each image is described as a passage between one state and another, with the boundary never fully dissolving.

Sayehafkan was born in Rasht in 1989 and lives and works in Tehran. Her earlier group exhibitions include Evocation Field in Los Angeles in 2024 and Continuum: The Unbroken Line of Persian Art in Dubai in 2025. The gallery is closed on Saturday and Sunday.