Timo Nasseri on Gardens, Geometry, and the Logic of Intuition

Timo Nasseri’s solo exhibition, The Garden of Forking Paths, concludes at Sabrina Amrani. Drawing on the symbolic language of the Persian garden, it explored questions of order, perspective, and multiplicity. The exhibition weaves together architecture, mythology, and cosmology to stage a reflective, immersive encounter. In this interview with Anastasia Nysten (AN), Nasseri speaks about the starting points of the project, the layers of meaning embedded in the works, and how intuition, geometry, and storytelling shaped the experience of the show.

Timo Nasseri, The Garden of Forking Paths, 2023. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 197 x 365 x 4.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

AN: You start the exhibition with the large painting The Garden of Forking Paths, the blue piece on the left as you enter. Can you tell us about it?

Timo Nasseri (TN): It’s inspired by Borges’ story of the same name. It’s not about a garden really, it’s about multiple levels of consciousness and decision-making. I found that compelling and brought it together with architectural elements I’m drawn to. I was thinking of Islamic miniature painting, where perspective is paradoxical. You see things from above, the side, multiple angles at once. To a Western eye, used to the central perspective, it can be confusing, but in that tradition it makes sense. It’s about showing simultaneous aspects. That resonated with me.

The painting mirrors that logic, fragmented, intuitive, but also links to my work around ornamentation, pattern, symmetry, and a sense of a heavenly or sublime order. The central dot represents the spring, where water begins in the garden, and also refers to the central building in the exhibition. The ChaharBagh garden is laid out in four directions, with a spring at the centre that feeds all sides. The four corners correspond to the elements, wind, fire, water, earth. The building is like the spring, but also where the paths fork, where you choose direction.

Later, I realised each element appears in the show. The watercolour I Talk to the Winds is wind. The five spot-dot paintings are spring waters. The large painting represents earth i.e foundations, architecture. And the video, for me, is fire; mesmerising like staring into flames. I didn’t plan it that way. The show came together intuitively, and only afterward did I realise the placements.

Timo Nasseri, I talk to the winds, 2025. Ink on paper, 167 x 203,6 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

AN: You begin the exhibition with a very beautiful set of vases, the Teardrop Vessels. What’s the story behind them?

Timo Nasseri, Teardrop #127, 2024. Black clay, glaze, 17 × 18 × 9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

TN: It’s an ongoing work with a long personal history. I first came across the term “teardrop vessels” about seven or eight years ago and was fascinated. I wondered if it was really a vessel to collect tears? I found out that in England, small glass bottles were said to hold the tears of kings, sealed loosely so the water would evaporate, leaving behind the essence or soul. I loved the idea of an object acknowledging grief.

During COVID, when everything shut down, I returned to it. In 2020, after events like the Iranian plane crash and the Beirut explosion, someone on the radio called it the year of tears. That stayed with me. I needed something grounding, so I made one vessel each day, not to collect literal tears, but to process emotion and stay present.

There’s also the Persian myth of tear catchers, glass bottles used by women while men were at war. That story was likely invented by 19th-century glassmakers, but it still expresses grief made physical. The vessels I made have a bodily symmetry, something you want to hold. They’re not for crying into, but each one has a glazed dent at the top like a silver tear. I made one every day until around day 180, but the idea still holds.

Timo Nasseri, Teardrop #133, 2024. Black clay, glaze, 15 × 18 × 8.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

AN: You work across many mediums: watercolour, video, sculpture. How does that come into play?

TN: Honestly, it makes things harder. I started out in commercial photography, then shifted to art. Someone once asked me to do a 3D piece for a show. I created a sculpture and was hooked. I never touched a camera again.

Even in photography, I was drawn to surface and precision, large-format cameras, technical detail. That same obsession carried into working with materials. I’m not formally trained in sculpture or painting, so I need to work hands-on to feel connected and steer the work properly.

Each piece calls for its own medium. The vessels had to be clay, not drawn. Some ideas must be painted, not printed. I’d never painted before, so I taught myself. I’m not trying to be a painter. I just need to go deep enough to say what I want. Watercolour made more sense than pencil because of its looseness and flow. Ultimately, I have to understand a process well enough to guide it. If someone else makes it, it becomes theirs. So yes, the work dictates the medium; it tells me what it needs.

AN: Where does this exhibition sit within your larger body of work?

Timo Nasseri, Gate #2, 2024. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 58 x 46 x 2,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

TN: I often think I’m starting fresh, but when new pieces sit next to older ones, I always see a thread. This show ties together themes I’ve worked on for 10 to 12 years. My Iranian heritage, storytelling, and different visual languages.

For example, I once worked with Arabic letters tied to a specific narrative, then moved in a different direction, researching razzle dazzle camouflage; a World War I tactic used to paint ships in geometric patterns that made it harder to judge their speed or direction. I loved the story. A painter, Wilkinson, is credited with inventing it, but a biologist had a similar idea based on animal patterns. They fought about it after the war. Picasso apparently saw one of the camouflaged ships and said: ‘they stole my art’.

This distortion-through-pattern idea also links to indigenous visual traditions, tribal motifs, textiles, even insects. The ships were originally brightly painted, though we only have black-and-white photos. I used original palettes for early paintings but abstracted them into spiritual icons such as totems or protectors. Eventually, I realised these forms were based on universal geometric shapes found across cultures. I began isolating and redrawing them, creating what I call a universal alphabet consisting of 960 shapes, which I installed across a 15-meter wall in a razzle dazzle layout. From there came sculptures, large three-meter steel figures I call Keeper Sculptures, drawn from the same visual language. So everything is connected. The patterns, the stories, the cultural references. They build what I now think of as The Order of Everything.

That alphabet also became part of the Teardrop Vessels. The painting in this exhibition comes from the same place. It’s not just camouflage, it also relates to earlier geometry drawings that suggest infinite extension. The edges feel open, as if the pattern could keep growing. It’s eightfold symmetry this time instead of fourfold, but the idea is the same. It’s a pattern that could go on forever.

So yes, one thing leads to another. The black and white drawings began during my research into Muqarnas on ornamental domes. That led to geometric drawing, which took me back to sculpture. Looking up into those domes felt like looking at stars, which led to constellations and imagined letters in the sky. It all feeds into itself. A beautiful mess, really.

Timo Nasseri, I saw a broken Labyrinth L1, 2025. Ink on paper, 159 x 196 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

AN: Can you talk about how people move through the exhibition? Is that part of your thinking?

TN: Yes, movement through the space is essential. It’s structured, but also designed to let people get a little lost like one would in a labyrinth. That idea runs through the large painting too.

What interests me in labyrinths is not just the mythology like the Minotaur and so on but the spiritual side. Why do you enter one? You’re looking for something. But really, it’s about finding yourself. That’s why it’s often used as a metaphor for spiritual searching.

The deeper you go, the more disoriented you get but you need to get lost to reach the centre. That’s a Sufi idea: you lose yourself to find something deeper. I’m not a Sufi, but I relate to that.

To me, the garden isn’t a physical place, it’s internal. A space where the boundary between physical and metaphysical dissolves. It’s a place for the senses: smell, sound, touch. All the elements are symbolic. The circle is unity, the cross is decision, the square is foundation. It speaks to the subconscious. The whole show is an invitation to lose yourself. Everything is considered, but it’s not about thinking, it’s about experiencing. And maybe, if you’re lucky, something opens up and you get a little closer to the centre. It doesn’t always make sense. But it’s art, it doesn’t have to.

AN: What are you working on now?

TN: I’m preparing for two group shows, one at a museum in Hamburg and another at the Hans Arp Museum near Bonn. Both focus more on the mathematical side of my work, meaning pieces that feel like abstract systems. They’re inspired by a Borges story about an infinite library. I started inventing a mathematical language through drawings, then translated those into sculpture.