Michal Mraz’s paintings tell us stories. His iconography is derived from black and white photographs of a bygone era, that of Les trente glorieuses (The Glorious Thirty) which, in the Western world, brought the middle classes certain prosperity. But this American dream, which was based on overconsumption turns out, fifty years later, to be a mirage. Of his suave and naive advertising imagery, the artist shows us the artifices by deteriorating the images like corroded photographic film. Time has passed, the dream has vanished replaced by a principle of reality where waste and depletion of resources have taken over this society with fake values.