Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian: Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped: Groucho Marx (while getting the patient’s pulse)

The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents the first solo exhibition in Germany by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian.

Dr. Philipp Demandt, Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, says: “The art of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian is a strong commentary on our time. 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—often 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.”

For the site-specific exhibition at the Schirn, the artists developed an environment that they regard as an alternative landscape. It revolves around the Near East, around war, exile, and migration as well as quarantine and dance. Based on the principle of work in progress, they bring together new and selected existing works, creating a dense web of detailed narratives and references. Starting point and centerpiece is the monumental floor painting created especially for the exhibition, O You People! (2020). It is supplemented with sculptures, texts, photographs, sound, as well as five videos such as From Sea to Dawn (2016-17), If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) and Dance After the Revolution (2020). On view are also new pieces dealing with work and life conditions during the Corona-Pandemic. As a collective they create their art frequently in exchange with friends or other artists, for example the two sculptures Suggestion: What If We Build Our Own Country, Drinking the Donkey’s Milk, Rather Than the Wolf’s? (2020), which were created in cooperation with artist Hoda Tawakol, or the performative video work We Are the Eighth of a Kind (2014), in collaboration with the American artist and musician Lonnie Holley.

Dr. Martina Weinhart, curator of the exhibition, explains: “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 patterns. Their environments are just as sensitive as they are visually overwhelming, raising questions regarding identity in a world in motion.”

Ramin Haerizadeh (*1975, Tehran), Rokni Haerizadeh (*1978, Tehran), and Hesam Rahmanian (*1980, Knoxville, Tennessee) met each other in Tehran in the mid-1990s. The artists have been living and working together in a shared house in Dubai since 2009. Their works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions as well as biennials around the world, including at the Kunsthalle Zürich (2015), the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2017), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2019), and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2019), the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019), and the Biennale of Sydney (2020).

A catalog edited by Martina Weinhart has been published in an English/German edition. It includes a foreword by Philipp Demandt, essays by Martina Weinhart, as well as short texts by the artists in cooperation with Nazli Ghassemi and an in-depth biography of the artist collective.

Director: Dr. Philipp Demandt
Curator: Dr. Martina Weinhart
Press contact: Johanna Pulz (Head of Press/Public Relations):
presse [​at​] schirn.de / T (+49 69) 29 98 82 148
Press material: www.schirn.de/en (texts, images, and films for download under PRESS)