In his work, Mostafa Darehbaghi moves back and forth in time with time taken in its both senses: as a singular physical quantity we measure by clocks or as an environment in which life of men flows (just as water for the fish) and to which all their behaviors, deeds, sayings and constructions are subject.

​The world of Mostafa’s Arts is a totally abstract world, time being its main constitutive material: it is not a geographical world. Even if, here and there, living creatures (mostly animals) are present, they are floating in a pure non-geographical and somehow placeless space. His pushes them out of a palpable space and leaves them alone, wandering in a particular temporal atmosphere. Living creatures and other objects (also considered alive in an indirect sense, for they are made by man) gain nearly the same abstract value as that of the two-dimensional geometrical or small embossed forms placed by the artist in the space of the work in an orderly, repetitive and steady rhythm.

​No matter how placeless the world of Mostafa’s works is or how their atmosphere, mostly temporal, is imbued with purity and simplicity, these works are charged with energy and mobility. Despite the void and ‘neatness’ that comes to eye on first sight and might appear austere or sterile, the works are brimming with a kind of dynamism or even rapture and a hidden anxiety which the viewer recognizes if not mistaken by the neat finishing or the flawless technique. Such (in times) extreme uneasiness hidden under the apparently calm and tranquil surface is the result of a going back and forth. For, this very motion is the artist’s main concern, the persistent movement filling, despite the local limitation and temporal brevity, the abstract space of the work with life. The motion is tenacious enough to finally supply the work with a palpable and local dimension which, although not yet geographical, can serve as metaphor for it. It resembles a wave attacking a nearly two-dimensional container finally expanding it, through continuation of its assault, into a deep vast place. It is due to such dynamism, mobility and hidden anxiety that His works never fall in the ambiguity, austerity and coldness (or in my eyes: lack of identity) of abstract-spatial works, even in their most abstract surfaces resulting from repetition of pure little geometrical forms or combination of small volumes in an orderly repetitive rhythm. Again, due to the same hidden dynamism nearly none of his works can be considered ‘minimal’ while, at first sight, such mistake is probable.

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