Posted by Sudbury Northern Life 
Sam Shahsahabi is opening at exhibition at La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario at 174 Elgin Street called The Museum of Nightmares March 14.
According to  Shahsahabi, you don't have to be dreaming to have a nightmare. You just have to look at what's happening around you.
The artist's approach is very personal, according to a release from the gallery.
"The source from which his latest works spring is the source from which nightmares emerge: instincts and the unconscious," the release said.
"Consequently, the paintings are devoid of realism which is superseded by symbolic imagery in overlapping layers. The artist invents machines in an attempt to capture what is hiding behind the works and he interlays everyday objects of all sorts which he displays like precious artefacts."
However, in his museum of nightmares, the artist has provided visitors with an exit… a ray of hope. In his most recent painting, a bird of perfect proportions spreads out inside a ring, like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
All sorts of animals emerge from or enter into the bird's chest, in a ferocious movement that surely seems to represent the arrival of a new era and the beginning of a new series of works.
Sam Shahsahabi was born in Iran, where he lived until 1996. He obtained his B.A. in Visual Arts at the Azad University in Tehran, then his Master's degree at York University in Toronto. His works have been exhibited in Iran, Turkey, Germany, Japan and Canada. He has been living and working in Sudbury since 2006.
Admission is free and the public is welcome.
