Despite their impasto appearance, the compositions depicted in Nikravan’s paintings are completely flat optical mirages. Nikravan’s paintings subtly critique abstract paintings’ charismatic appeal, and play with the paradox of abstract painting as a three-dimensional intervention of paint on a flat canvas plane most frequently viewed in the format of a flat JPG image. Nikravan’s latest series, (Paintings), are large-scale works on canvas painted with an acrylic intended for use in cartoon-making. Appropriately enough, as these paintings are effectively caricatures of abstract paintings, both in their seductively banal compositions and in their exaggerated scale. These works act as poignant critiques of the state of abstract painting today and its modes of manic consumption.