Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde Dubai hosts artist trio in Frankfurt
SHARJAH: Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde Dubai has announced the first solo exhibition in Germany (Sept. 3 - Dec. 13) by the Uae-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, one of Europe’s most renowned exhibition institutions, titled Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped. Groucho Marx (while geting the patient’s pulse), borrowing from the film classic A Day at the Races (1937) by the Marx Brothers. Curated by Dr Martina Weinhart, the expansive installation debuts a monumental floor painting created especially for the Schrin — a dense web of detailed narratives and references supplemented by sculptures and video works, such as We Are the Eighth of a Kind (2014), in collaboration with the artist and musician Lonnie Holley, From Sea to Dawn (2016), and the new production If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020).
The base and centre of the trio’s artistic work is their house in Dubai. In the process of living and working together, they create artworks and exhibitions frequently in an exchange with friends and other artists. In line with this principle, the exhibition also includes two textile sculptures by Franco-egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol. The landscape they represent returns repeatedly to the Near East and revolves around war, migration, quarantine and dance. With melancholic poetry and caustic humour, the artists transform bleak scenes into caricature-like grotesques that reflect the abstruse nature of the global world. “The art of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and
Hesam Rahmanian is a strong commentary on our time”, says Dr Philipp Demandt, Director of Schirn Kunsthalle. “Starting from the urgency of current social and political topics, their artistic oeuvre deals with mechanisms of power, migration, and the consequences of wars and conflicts.
“Their works are created in dialogue — oten with other artists from around the world. This international exchange, these encounters beyond day-to-day life, significantly broaden our gaze, something that is of central importance more than ever”. “What do the Marx Brothers, gender issues, migration, the Iran-iraq War, and art have to do with each other? In the work of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, their Persian roots and Western pop culture come together as well as high culture and camp, the banal and serious political issues.
“The Iranian artist trio is adept at creating a cosmos that facilitates surprising connections and encounters and thus breaks with conventional paterns. Their environments are just as sensitive as they are visually overwhelming, raising questions regarding identity in a world in motion,” says Dr Weinhart. The installations of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian transport viewers into a highly distinctive world.the Iranian artist collective creates surprising encounters that draw atention to the urgent political and social conflicts of our age, challenging power mechanisms, normative gender roles and the art world. Based on the principle of work in progress, the artists bring together new and existing works to create immersive installations. In accordance with their definition of the collective, they work together in their own style as well as independently of one another.
Curator’s statement: Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, three Iranian artists who live in Dubai since 2009, were supposed to showcase a new installation in the gallery of the Schirn in summer 2020. Across various Biennales, their works had impressed me time and again, and their unbelievably striking “From Sea to Dawn” installation, which I saw by chance in Vienna, had lingered in my mind ever since. The artists took media reports about migration and merged them together to create a gesamtkunstwerk (comprehensive artwork) that is as subtly nuanced as it is visually overwhelming, comprising videos, painting, drawing, texts, photographs, and found objects.
Particularly impressive to me was an enormous painted floor-based work that meandered through the rooms of the gallery and in which the observer got lost as they themselves become part of the artwork. My enthusiasm was warmly received and shared by the Schirn, so contact was made with the artists. What followed was a series of meetings and telephone conversations. Production then began in Dubai relatively quickly. The plan was for the artists to produce an expansive, floor-based work for the Schirn, too. This was prety laborious in organisational terms.
The artists rented an industrial hall for the purpose, which more or less corresponded to the dimensions of the large hall in the Schirn. I received the first images of the new work as early as the spring holiday — really magnificent pictures, I thought. The exhibition at the Schirn was originally scheduled to open on May 27. Everything was going well, but then suddenly it all came to a standstill. The coronavirus pandemic meant everything had to be put on hold for the time being. In the Schirn, meanwhile, we tried to get a clear picture of the situation. I was continually watching Dubai virtually, speaking to the artists, the gallery owner, then the artists again. It wasn’t long before I received the video “From March to April…2020”, in which Hesam, Ramin and Rokni find a poetic form for their time in quarantine. Time — decelerated to extremes here — plays a central role in the trio’s work, which continually shits between time-based media like the film and other forms of expression.