MEHDI GHADYANLOO: THE SACRED CIRCUS — SUSPENDED MYTHS
ALMINE RECH NEW YORK is pleased to present The Sacred Circus — Suspended Myths, Mehdi Ghadyanloo fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.
November 07 — December 19, 2025
It is difficult to imagine still being able to “fool the eye,” and yet deceptions abound. Advanced technologies have made deceit more in vogue than ever. Every image presents itself as an unreliable narrator—a promise that is, by its own account, untrustworthy. Images were never meant to be trusted, but their veracity is also undeniable. For every lie, there are hard truths and even more impermeable facts. Experiences can still be rendered and shaped into visible form, though it may be that we are often in denial and don’t want to see what is there to be seen.
Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s painted images are known to traffic in visual trickery, but to call them trompe l'oeil misses the point. Their brand of joyful exuberance—playful candy-coated bubble gum pop imagery—is more likely than not a decoy for something more sinister. There is a childlike quality to the artist’s recent paintings. The objects they render are of indeterminate scale; they seem to represent impossible playgrounds just off the assembly line, waterslides in waiting, or toys on the shelves of an abandoned toy store. But they are also depictions of solitary confinement. These tubular characters—an octopus merry-go-round, an elephant slide, a bunny tower—appear to be trapped in their boxes and illuminated from above by an oculus. The glow that rakes across the lush pinks, purples, yellows, and aquamarines of Ghadyanloo’s series of paintings is ominous and foreboding. There is a palpable violence even if it is rendered saccharine.
The contradiction here is not insignificant. Imagine the possibility of hope, humor, and play in situations of despair; how prisoners of uncertain futures might breathe between their escapist fantasies and unthinkable lived realities. These playthings are captive, but they are steadfast and unwavering in their commitment to being devices of wonder for adults and children alike. It is not only what Ghadyanloo has painted, but it is how he has painted that inspires the feeling of curiosity. His paintings are animated by an interaction of shadow and light that gives them life, that makes them accessible to us as viewers even if that accessibility is achieved through the seemingly nefarious ways of illusion. We see what Ghadyanloo allows us to see, what his paintings have afforded us to see. The suggestion is that we have been granted access to a world that is otherwise contained and unavailable to vision. Turn off the interrogation light, put the lid back on, close the crate, and it all goes away.
That which we don’t want to see recedes back into the unknown, our secrets go back into hiding, the abused return to their isolation, and life continues as it did before for those of us both on the inside and outside. We know what darkness looks like even if we haven’t seen it for ourselves. Ghadyanloo’s paintings are contradictions in visual pleasure—what feels good for some might be torture for others.