Rokni Haerizadeh:Fictionville
book launch
Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 6:30pm
Majlis Al Salam, Mina a’Salam, Madinat Jumeirah
Art Dubai
On the occasion of the publication of Fictionville (Koenig Books, London), a book launch will be hosted by Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde during Art Dubai. A conversation between Negar Azimi (Senior Editor, Bidoun), Tina Kukielski (curator, Carnegie International 2013) and Rokni Haerizadeh will take place at the event. Haerizadeh’s most recent animation work, Reign of Winter, on view now at the Carnegie International, will also be screened.
“Rokni Haerizadeh…has an unerring gift—shaped by Persian painting and perhaps by Goya and Art Spiegelman—for reworking found photographs into disturbing, if often beautiful, animations. His subjects here include the 2009 Iranian demonstrations and Britain’s latest royal wedding.”
–Roberta Smith, The New York Times
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is pleased to announce the launch of Rokni Haerizadeh’s first monograph, Fictionville. The volume, which brings together four years of work, is edited by Negar Azimi and includes contributions by Media Farzin, Tina Kukielski, and Sohrab Mohebbi. The book is designed by Copenhagen-based All the Way to Paris and published by Koenig Books, London.
Fictionville is built around two sets of works: “Fictionville” (2009–) and a new series of drawings and animations made on the occasion of the 2013 Carnegie International. For Haerizadeh, life is rendered as a series of elaborate rituals, alternately richly comic, absurd, tragic, farcical, and finally, devastatingly familiar. The 34-year-old Dubai-based artist is perhaps best known for painterly tableaux whose subject matter draws from weddings, galas, murders, parades, funerals, riots, and revolutions. His human forms—often very large and wildly expressionist—turn a crooked lens onto the madness of contemporary society.
“‘Paintings unravel in a minute,’ says Rokni as we eventually sit down over tea in Pittsburgh—our first meeting in person. His animations, on the other hand, insist on time, as both a means for production (a short six-minute work might be composed of 3,500 separate hand-painted frames) and a condition required for viewing them. The result is an otherworldly quality that flickers, glows, pulses, and breathes with mystery and mystique.”
–Tina Kukielski
“The images are, true to ‘Fictionville”s name, vividly unreal; they depict a fantastic bestiary of battling characters and pulsating, anthropomorphized scenery. But the scenes they depict are, nonetheless, familiar. The bodies rehearse the classical language of contemporary news media spectacles: the tropes of trenchant nationalism, military triumphalism, defiant rebellion, cowering victimhood, not to mention natural and man-made disasters. Violence—specifically human violence—is their common link. If the images are uncanny, it’s because we recognize familiar prejudices in strange bodies: Performed by fleshy and corpulent demons and beasts, human actions take on a startling expressiveness.”
–Media Farzin
Fictionville contributors
–Negar Azimi is a writer and the senior editor of Bidoun.
–Media Farzin is a New York–based writer and PhD candidate in art history at the City University of New York.
–Tina Kukielski, together with Daniel Baumann and Dan Byers, curated the 2013 Carnegie International.
–Sohrab Mohebbi is the assistant curator at REDCAT in Los Angeles.
About Rokni Haerizadeh
Rokni Haerizadeh is represented by Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, where he has had two solo presentations of his work to date. His more recent group exhibitions include the 2013 Carnegie International, Charles Saatchi’s Unveiled: Art from the Middle East (2009), and Raad o Bargh at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris (2009). At abc Berlin in 2011, he and his brother, Ramin Haerizadeh, transformed the booth into a dynamic installation replicating their studio space. At Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde in March 2012, he extended this project further in an exhibition titled I Put It There, You Name It. In June 2010, he had an exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac entitled Be Crowned with Laurel in Oblivion. At the Sharjah Biennial in 2011, Haerizadeh presented “Fictionville,” an ongoing project featuring animation and works on paper; he subsequently presented new works from this project at Art Basel Statements in 2012. In January 2014 the artist, along with Ramin Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, participated as fellows in the Rauschenberg Residency. His works are held in public and private collections, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, The British Museum, Tate Modern, the Devi Art Foundation, the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, the Rubell Family Collection, and the Rosenblum Collection. The artist currently lives and works in Dubai.
For all press inquiries please contact Jules McDevitt at jules [at] ivde.net or T +971 (0) 4323 5052.
