Causey Contemporary Features Solo Exhibit by Bahar Behbahani, Now thru 3/3

Causey Contemporary will feature a selection of Behbahani's large-scale mixed media paintings from her My Faantazee series at their DUMBO location, marking the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery.Her recent body of paintings, created in her Brooklyn studio, five years after relocating to the United States from Iran, were completed with an anticipated freedom from the feeling that "you had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized" (George Orwell, 1984). However, in My Faantazee, Behbahani found that the "essence of being watched is universally infused."

The works capture their subjects mid-action, as if by camera. Moments are frozen. Their endeavors come with the promise of sweet 'treats'-in the name of a liberation operation or simply a 'free rectal exam'. Witty characters are ensnared in this pop-grotesque world: horny babies, seductive kids, totemic fetish toys, donkeys and American-made superheroes. Surprised that her physical displacement from the East to the West brought her a vivid political and social déjà vu, the protagonists in Behbahani's new series-from babies to iconic superheroes-each entertain a fear of being watched. They anxiously search for hidden cameras and eyes. This constant fear imbues a childhood hyper-maturity as well as an adult infancy, as beings in all stages of life are subjugated to this invasiveness.

Hidden Camera will open with an artist's reception tonight, February 7 as part of First Thursday in DUMBO and will run through Sunday, March 3, 2013.