Exhibition by Mehdi Ghadyanloo at Almine Rech Gallery in New York
- Delphine & Romain Class
- 19 hours ago
- 5 min read
The name Mehdi Ghadyanloo evokes mental landscapes suspended between the real and the imaginary — floating architectures where light seems to defy gravity. After making the walls of Tehran vibrate, the Iranian painter and street artist returns to New York with a highly anticipated exhibition: The Sacred Circus – Suspended Myths, presented at Almine Rech Gallery from November 7 to December 19, 2025. This fifth solo exhibition with the gallery marks a new stage in a career that continues to question memory, solitude, and the possibility of hope in a fragmented world.
From the Streets of Tehran to the Galleries of the World
Born in 1981 in Karaj, near Tehran, Mehdi Ghadyanloo grew up in an Iran marked by war and censorship, but also by a strong sense of community and reconstruction. The son of a farmer and a weaver, he discovered early on the power of images as a means of escape. After studying painting at the University of Tehran, he earned a master’s degree in animation — two disciplines that would shape his dual approach to space: both architectural and narrative, rigorous and poetic.
Between 2004 and 2011, the street artist gained recognition through more than a hundred monumental murals across Tehran. These works, inspired by Western trompe-l’œil techniques yet infused with an Eastern sensibility, transformed the gray façades of the capital into open windows onto parallel worlds. Floating balloons, stairways to the sky, dreamlike figures — the walls became breaths of air in a city saturated with concrete. These public interventions, supported by the municipality, revealed an artist capable of blending technical mastery with symbolic power.
But after this urban decade, Ghadyanloo felt the need for introspection. He left behind the monumental scale to return to the intimate space of the canvas — a place where silence, solitude, and light take on a metaphysical dimension.
The Visual Language of Illusion and Emptiness
On his canvases, Mehdi Ghadyanloo composes enclosed yet breathing spaces — boxes, tunnels, corridors, or open cages, often pierced by a beam of light. These impossible architectures recall the metaphysical surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico, the illusory constructions of Escher, and the emotional restraint of American minimalism.
But here, emptiness is never barren — it is inhabited by memory. Balloons, children’s toys, swings, or colorful circles float through the air like fragments of lost dreams. These simple, universal objects become relics of childhood — symbols of suspended innocence in the face of the gravity of adulthood.
The artist often explains that his works speak of the in-between: between hope and nostalgia, light and shadow, freedom and constraint.
“I paint places that don’t exist, but where everyone can find themselves,”he once confided during a previous exhibition in London.
“The Sacred Circus – Suspended Myths”: A Theatre of Suspended Emotions
For his new exhibition in New York, Ghadyanloo explores the theme of the circus — not as a space of spectacle, but as a metaphor for the human condition. The circus is a place where everything is possible — where beauty and danger blur, where balance is played out in the tension of the void. Yet it is also an ephemeral, itinerant space — almost sacred in its fragility.
The title, The Sacred Circus – Suspended Myths, brings together these two dimensions: the sacred, which connects humans to a form of transcendence, and the suspended myth — that is, collective stories frozen in time, which we carry within us without always fully understanding.
Through a new series of large-scale paintings, Ghadyanloo conjures familiar forms — trapezes, rings, ropes, beams of light — but redirects them to create scenes of silence and suspension. The figures vanish: only objects, shadows, and structures remain. It is as if the performance has paused, giving way to a moment of waiting, fragile balance, a breath suspended between two worlds.
A Painting of Light and Silence
Ghadyanloo’s strength lies in his ability to paint light as a protagonist. In each of his compositions, it emerges from an invisible angle, revealing volumes, carving out perspectives, or drawing an opening to the outside. His soft shadows, subtle gradients of gray and ochre, and mastery of chiaroscuro create an almost cinematic atmosphere.
This geometric rigor does not exclude tenderness. Where some abstract painters opt for coldness or distance, Ghadyanloo infuses a poetry of silence, a quiet humanism. His empty spaces are not absences, but promises of presence.
Between Memory and Hope
Although he avoids any explicit political discourse, Ghadyanloo continually engages with his personal history and that of his country. His mental architectures bear the invisible traces of the Iran-Iraq war, surveillance, and loss, but also resilience and the ability to dream against all odds. His canvases serve as refuges, spaces for reflection on what it means to remain human in a constrained world.
In The Sacred Circus, the circus becomes a metaphor for this poetic survival: a space where, despite emptiness and tension, beauty persists, suspended.
A Key Milestone in an International Career
For Almine Rech Gallery, which has represented the artist for several years, this exhibition continues a fruitful trajectory. Following acclaimed presentations in London, Brussels, and Shanghai, this new solo show in New York confirms Ghadyanloo’s central place in the global contemporary art scene.
His art, both intimate and universal, speaks to a wide audience far beyond his Iranian roots. It transcends cultural boundaries to address what connects us all: the search for meaning, the memory of emotions, and the beauty of doubt.
An Artwork for Our Time
In an era saturated with images and noise, Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s painting offers a rare counterpoint: silence, slowness, contemplation. His canvases, at once rigorous and dreamlike, invite viewers to suspend time — to remember that light can emerge from emptiness, and that myth is never entirely lost.
In New York, The Sacred Circus – Suspended Myths promises an immersive and meditative experience, a dialogue between the visible and the invisible. In this sacred circus of memory, everyone is invited to rediscover a part of themselves, suspended between shadow and light.
Exhibition: The Sacred Circus – Suspended Myths
Artist: Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Location: Almine Rech Gallery, 361 Broadway, New York
Dates: November 7 – December 19, 2025
Opening Reception: November 7, 6–8 PM
Website: www.alminerech.com
