The Chronicle of Cenmar’s Descent in Kafka’s Castle

Feb. 5, 2018

The Chronicle of Cenmar’s Descent in Kafka’s Castle is a site-specific installation that is constructed in the scales of Mohsen Gallery’s PASIO. It was aimed at occupying the entire PASIO space with stair structure providing a route for viewers to walk in a vertical direction.

In his current project, Behrang Samadzadegan is inspired by the two stories, their significant similarities, and the historical situation in which he lives. He understood both stories to be about alienation. They both describe absurd bureaucracies, the frustration of an attempt to conduct business with non-transparent, arbitrary systems, and the futile pursuit of unobtainable goals and empty promises. Samadzadegan traces regimes and hierarchies that distort information and knowledge; systems such as politics, aesthetics, and history are regimes, capable of making a subject-matter hollow or sterile. Thus, they could create absurd hierarchies that have no use but to create constant confusion. Image of a fictional stairway, which is usually noticeable in his paintings, was first inspired by Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and is a recurrent metaphor for “non-arrival.” He is now restudying it in Mohsen Gallery’s Pasio.