Book "On Fatigue": Mahmoud Bakhshi in Conversation with Shahrzad Changalvaee

Hardcover Bilingual, 136 pages Vaziri (royal octavo) format Mahmoud Bakhshi has been making things for more than twenty years. It is this very making that is constantly questioned in his work: why to make, how to make, and how the work continues in the viewer's gaze. For him, art is a daily, unceasing practice and, in his own words, often tedious and exhausting; a path that must move toward completion. His works generally appear premeditated and carefully planned, and although they naturally go through doubt and change as they are made, in the end I do not think he can be considered a progressive artist. Watching, spectatorship and the gaze are ever-present in his artistic world. He constantly places himself in the position of the spectator or the one being watched, or turns to absence as another form of looking. He seems to sense the gaze of an all-seeing viewer, an observer of history, watching over his artistic practice and the language of his work, even though his works sometimes address local and time-bound events and themes.