Morshedloo’s canvases are disarming in their unassuming beauty. His paintings of people possess a mesmerising quality transforming the transient scenes of everyday street life to eternal moments of contemplation. Morshedloo develops his images with understated compositional devices which lend a sense of careful balance, both visually and psychologically. In Untitled, he uses the contrast of both tone and subject matter to create an underlying tension. The black robed women float weightlessly against the sun-bleached background, the abstracted negative space of their drapery forming a surreal juxtaposition to the men’s leisurely nakedness. The canvas is cropped at the left edge with a trompe l’oiel wall which does not fit as part of the scene but rather operates as a metaphorical barrier, the hooked chain which hangs on it symbolising oppression and temptation.