"Turkmen Old House" Painting

Jamaleddin Toomajnia is an Iranian painter, art historian and research-based artist whose work investigates the intersection of memory, cultural identity, and the silent transformation of landscapes. Living and working in Istanbul, Türkiye, he creates layered abstract paintings that blur the boundaries between physical places and emotional experience, inviting viewers into spaces where history, time, and memory coexist.

Holding a PhD in Art History from Istanbul Technical University, Toomajnia developed his artistic vision through extensive research into the modernization of art in Iran and Türkiye. Rather than separating theory from practice, he integrates academic inquiry directly into his painting process. Each work becomes an exploration of cultural archaeology, where successive layers of paint function as visual records of disappearance, preservation, and renewal.

His paintings are built through an intuitive dialogue of addition and removal. Acrylic, scraping, dripping, staining, and textured surfaces create compositions that reveal traces of earlier gestures beneath the final image. These hidden layers become metaphors for memory itself—never entirely erased, always shaping the present. While his work often suggests distant horizons, weathered architecture, forests, or forgotten cities, it intentionally resists literal representation, allowing viewers to construct their own narratives.

Influenced by Abstract Expressionism, European Art Informel, and contemporary material abstraction, Toomajnia combines expressive freedom with structural discipline. His compositions balance gestural spontaneity and architectural order, producing contemplative spaces where silence carries as much meaning as form. Rather than depicting landscapes, he paints the psychological residue they leave behind.

A recurring theme throughout his practice is the relationship between migration, belonging, and cultural memory. Growing up in Iran and living for many years in Türkiye has shaped his sensitivity to place, displacement, and identity. Instead of illustrating personal history directly, he translates these experiences into layered surfaces where absence becomes presence and erosion becomes a form of remembrance.

For Toomajnia, painting is a process of excavation rather than illustration. Every mark is both a discovery and a concealment. His works invite prolonged observation, revealing new relationships between texture, light, and space over time.