Creating compositions from oil paint or pastel becomes, for Sohrab, a process of both remembrance and of imagination. This exhibition includes multiple portraits of the artist’s father that stem from these dual approaches. A 2023 drawing finds his father in bed, holding the single stem of a flower to his nose, as a lit cigarette waits in an ashtray by his bedside. There is a recent study of his hands, resting on his chest, one adorned with an IV and the other with a hospital bracelet. In a recent painting, Sohrab’s mother, bent in anguish over his bedside, signals the torment of the inevitable cycle of life and death. Over these past months, Sohrab has regularly accompanied his father for medical appointments, and has become attuned to the element of “elongated time” in a hospital waiting room. “Being in the hospital I became quite aware of waiting,” he described. “You have to wait for everything.” One of his paintings portrays this helpless condition, as a person is folded into his seat, and into himself, with his eyes covered as if to defend himself from the brightness of the yellow wall.

Waiting was also a sensation that Sohrab associated with the technique of oil painting. “I’d heard that you have to wait for the oil to dry before you can put more paint on,” he told me. “In general I think I’m quite restless, so it was a bit of a challenge.” This urge to explore a new challenge might be seen as an extension of the drawing practice Sohrab has taken up over the last few years, after years of being identified as a photographer. Painting “became a way for me to know myself a little more.” Actually, he reflected, that is “the main reason for making any kind of work.”

Timelines: A tableau of images—including the artist’s parents, student protests, and Rosa Parks’s mugshot—collide in this new body of work that considers the recursive nature of storytelling. Scenes from films, iconic photographs of international events, and personal images cover the different faces of boxes, which can be arranged in a myriad of ways. Whether stacked, flattened, opened, or closed, the works’ viewpoints resist linear narratives, highlighting the contradictions that arise when “unpacking a story.”