The works of Rokni Haerizadeh, ranging from painting to collage, sculpture and animation, form a narrative that explores the extremities of human behaviour. Haerizadeh finds humour in the arts from the late Safavid to Qajar eras, in their exaggerated depictions of existence where intended dignity disappoints to reveal farcical imperfections. By rejecting romantic nostalgia, he captures the humour we depend upon to negotiate our flawed world.
Read MoreEphemeral oral cultures, from Coffee House painting narration to contemporary news broadcasts, distort, ravage and regenerate narratives as Rokni Haerizadeh does. He depicts a decadent world, exaggerated by a fantastical sense of the absurd, and amplified by his compelling and intrinsic manipulations of reality. In his series ‘Fictionville,’ found media photographs capturing violence, torture and suffering are transformed into satirical tales that echo our grotesque reality; harrowing scenes of riots, demonstrations and natural disasters are corrupted to become perverse scenes of sensual delights and animalistic instincts.
He creates a controversial and disturbing narrative, a commedia dell’arte animated by the vocabulary of contemporary film, art, literature and music. Each character in Haerizadeh’s narratives is the expression of a mood; frustration, desire, naivety, perversion, decency, violence and shame reveal themselves through his painterly approaches. When he rips images apart, destruction and nihilism subvert meanings spontaneously. When he thrashes paint on the canvas, protest and torture mingle, and the violent process makes a mockery of religious bigotry.
Rokni Haerizadeh’s works - whether direct responses to society, the histories of art, literature and oral culture, or organic expressions of moods and sensations - are fragments in a never-ending and elaborate creative process. Instinctive desires and struggles are unleashed and challenged by Haerizadeh to emerge like castrated howls; Words are abandoned, and narratives materialize as disturbingly vivid collages of sensations and scenarios that repeat, evolve, regress, and re-emerge.
He has had several solo shows in Dubai with Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, most recently Oh Victory, you Forgot your Underwear in 2009, and has participated in group shows such as Charles Saatchi’s Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East (2009), and Raad-o-Bargh at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris (2009). At the invitation only ABC Berlin in 2011 on the theme About Painting, he and his brother Ramin Haerizadeh transformed the booth into a dynamic installation replicating their studio space. In his upcoming show I Put It There, You Name It in March 2012 at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, he is extending this project further. He participated in Iran Gardens at the Tehran Museum for Contemporary Art in 2004 as well as Iran.com at the Museum Fur Neue Kunst in Freiburg, Germany. In June 2010, he had an exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac entitled Be Crown with Laurel in Oblivion. In the Sharjah Biennale 2011, Rokni Haerizadeh presented Fictionville, a project featuring an animation. In Art Basel Art Statements 2012, the artist will present a solo show. His works are included in public and private collections, among which the Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Devi Art Foundation, the JP Morgan Chase Collection, the Rubell Family Collection, the Rosenblum collection. The artist currently lives and works in Dubai.
