Mohammad Khalili

Mohammad Khalili is (b. 1971, Torbat-e Jam – painter and educator) regarded as one of the influential figures in contemporary Iranian painting. He holds an MFA in Painting, is a permanent member of the Iranian Painters Association, and has been awarded the First-Class Art Honor in this field. His first solo exhibition was held in 2005 at Farrokh Gallery in Mashhad, and since then his works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Iran and abroad. Alongside his artistic practice, Khalili has taught at several universities—including Tehran, Art University, Sooreh, Semnan, and Shiraz—contributing to the education of a new generation of artists.
Khalili’s paintings evoke a world of objects, landscapes, and places that have yielded to stillness, oblivion, and decay. By revealing what is often overlooked in everyday perception, his works express a profound sense of solitude, melancholy, and estrangement. Yet his art is not a mere representation of reality; rather, it invites both himself and the viewer to an existential contemplation, while also calling for a critical reflection on the dominance of technology and humanity’s relationship with nature.
Among his most significant series are You Must Have Already Drowned (2011), Forbidden Zone (2012), Nowhere (2014), Empty Place (2015), Silent Side (2018), Geometry of Silence (2020), and Straitened (2022). Taken together, his works reflect on absence and silence, while questioning the contemporary human experience of decay, isolation, and forgetfulness.