Reza Shafahi: This Moment
March 10 - April 5, 2020

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
- Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyåm

“….Barron stands out for the self-contained strength of its presentations...loopy, brilliant acrylics of naked centaurs and coffee cups with breasts by the Tehran-based former professional wrestler
Reza Shafahi.”
- Will Heinrich, “The Outsider Art Fair 2020: 7 Must-See Exhibitions,” The New York Times, January 17, 2020

“Reza Shafahi in fact took up his son’s challenge to start drawing after his retirement. He has not only enjoyed his activity, but excelled as an artist…”
- Ashkan Sepahvand, Palais, Palais de Tokyo, p. 52

James Barron Art is pleased to present an exhibition of Reza Shafahi’s recent work.

Before becoming a self-taught artist, Shafahi had a career as a professional wrestler and was forced to stop during the Iranian revolution. Shafahi began painting in 2012, at age 72, encouraged by his son, Mamali Shafahi. He now works as a full-time artist. Both father and son began work on a long-term art project entitled Daddy Sperm, which was exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2019.

Shafahi draws influence from the Persian poet, Omar Khayyåm, literature, films and world events. By combining these influences, he creates surrealist vignettes with his own unique visual language. Shafahi’s work combines the dream-like and the erotic into whimsical, eccentric compositions. The light in Shafahi’s work is overall and brilliant, and feels infused with love. Omar Khayyam wrote: “How sad a
heart that / does not know how to love, that / does not know what it is to be drunk with love / If you are not in love, how can you enjoy / the blinding light of the sun, / the soft light of the moon?” Reza Shafahi’s work is drunk with love.

Shafahi lives and works in Tehran. His work has been exhibited at Marlborough Gallery, New York; Tony Cox, New York; Delgosha Gallery, Tehran; Henry Boxer Gallery, Berlin; SpazioA Gallery, Pistoia; and in “City Prince/esses' at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, June 21 - September 8, 2019. In January, Shafahi was featured at our booth in the Outsider Art Fair, New York. This is his first exhibition in Connecticut.