Concept of Presence and Absence in Deconstroction Strategy: Reading the Paintings of Aydin Aghdashloo

This essay is an attempt to view deconstructed notions of “Presence” and “Absence” and to analyze readings that focus on a few paintings. The central argument of this paper has two parts. First, we explain concepts of “Presence and Absence” and “Truth in Art” in terms of Jacques Derrida. This study is based on “deconstruction”. Derrida developed a strategy called “deconstruction” in the mid-1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with a critique of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking-presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth. A second aspect of the negative binary oppositions is Derrida's strategy to turn over the oppositions to become the definitive meaning plural. In the second part, the four paintings of Aidin Aghdashloo (b.1319), the Iranian contemporary painter, will be analyzed through Derridian reading of deconstruction. We see here the four works of different periods of the artist's works with the topics of Identity, Oriental (Diary of Destruction), Years of Fire, Enigma III and Enigma X. Aghdashloo’s paintings, Can take a pluralistic approach, uncertainty, and ultimately eliminate the effect of the truth and turn it into a relative will. The present study attempts to investigate, how the concepts of “Presence” and “Through in Art” in opposition with “Absence” are explained in “Deconstruction” strategy and finally with this strategy how we can read some Iranian contemporary paintings. The results of this strategy are the potential of “Deconstruction” for the analysis and study of art in boarder domain.