Behrang Samadzadegan’s exhibition, entitled ‘Love in the Time of Unrest’ simultaneously depicts hope, regret, optimism and despair. Reflecting on our inability to accept sadness and gloom, the artist fuses the whimsy of contemporary popular culture with appropriated press images that depict terrorism, horror and violence. The curtain of decoration is a thin veil for deeper, more tragic subjects.

‘The world around me is filled with a mixture of these feelings; gloom hidden behind a decorated curtain and smiles that become an image for propaganda and suggest joy and light. And when the gloom reappears from behind the curtain and shows itself beyond the Janus face of our society, we escape to humor and coquetry to make reality endurable. So we alter the reality to make it tolerable. Reality changes color in our hands.
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