Artspace and Artadia are pleased to present Love Bomb (Persian Cat), a vibrant new edition by Tehran-born, New York-based artist Hadi Falapishi, created in a run of 30 unique, color silkscreen prints, with hand embellishing on 290gsm Coventry Rag paper with enamel, acrylic, and pastel. Each is signed and numbered on the front and measures. 24 x 16 inches.
Love Bomb (Persian Cat) brings together the key elements of Falapshi’s practice, bright color, bold lines, and mixed media - in a rare edition.
Photography courtesy artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery
Across his practice, Falapishi employs recurring motifs, including cats, people, and other creatures, to construct layered narratives.
In Love Bomb (Persian Cat), a large, cartoon-like Persian cat dominates the frame as a tiny house sits unassumingly in the distance. Falapishi sets these playfully scaled subjects against a flat background, creating a sense of ambiguity and wonder.
In his work, Falapishi often deploys simple characters to implicit narrative ends. His work often gestures toward the immigrant experience and the paradoxes inherent in ideas about America.
Photography Garrett Carroll
Almost There, a site-specific installation for a Whitney Museum show in 2023 was a giant enlargement of one of his photograms, showing a dog, cat, and mouse in a boat, with a human oddly positioned below, headed toward a distant island.
The Whitney’s curatorial text described the image as “an allegory of migration” that engages with the museum’s location on the Hudson River and broader questions of destination, displacement, and reception.
The Whitney also noted that Falapishi’s art “uses deceptively childish and humorous iconography to depict the crude and problematic interrelationships that structure society,” adding that, "the vignettes Falapishi creates sometimes contain perplexing or disturbing undertones that contrast with the juvenile motifs."
Interviewed by Vogue about the piece, Falapshi reflected on his own journey from Iran to the United States: “Coming from Iran, basically when I was thinking of the States, it meant going toward the West - going toward where the sun sets."
Photography courtesy artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery
Falapishi’s work has gained institutional and critical attention in recent years, with notable profiles in Artforum and The Brooklyn Rail. As well as the solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York back in 2023, his work is currently included in Diary of Flowers: Artists and their Worlds, on view through January 4, 2026, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA.
He received his MFA in Photography from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2016. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and MoCA, Los Angeles, among others.
Photography courtesy artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery
A portion of proceeds from the sale of Love Bomb (Persian Cat)go to Artadia, a non-profit grantmaking organization and nationwide community of visual artists, curators, and patrons. Over two decades, Artadia has worked collaboratively to foster a more just arts economy and improve the conditions necessary for artists of all backgrounds to thrive. Take a closer look at Love Bomb (Persian Cat) here)
Photography Garrett Carroll
