Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Either He´S Dead Or My Watch Has Stopped: Groucho Marx (While Getting The Patient’s Pulse), installation view
Fundamental element of the Schirn exhibition is the large-format floor painting O You People! (2020). The structure is based on a nearly ritual performance in which the three artists transform themselves into dastgāh. The Persian term dastgāh denotes all tools that are needed for a particular purpose or process. The painting combines design principles and motifs from traditional Persian painting with aspects of the present time.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, O You People!, 2020. Acrylic, gesso and lacquer on MDF boards,
100 x 100 cm each (272 panels). Overall surface: 17 x 16 m (approx)
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
The basis for the artists’ Moving Paintings are, in turn, pictures archives of photographs and media reports that the artists have compiled themselves. They are then painted over and animated anew by the artists. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) is dedicated to the struggle for the dominance of pictures and raises questions regarding the values of society.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, If I had Two Paths, I would choose the third, 2020. Single
channel colour video (rotoscopy), no sound. 7 minutes and 2 seconds. Edition of 7 (+3 AP)
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
As a collective, the artists also address current events very directly. The exhibition thus presents not least works that were created during the corona pandemic. The video From March to April . . . 2020 (2020) casts the period of the artists’ quarantine in a poetic form. While the days of the week from Monday to Sunday are repeated again and again in the voiceover, the camera slowly pans a dining table that is simultaneously a desk on which life and work take place in a very confined space.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, From March to April...2020, 2020. Single channel video with
sound, 7 minutes and 46 seconds. Edition of 5 (+3 AP)
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
The social upheavals and aftereffects of the Iranian Revolution (1978–79) also permeate the exhibition. The video work Dance After the Revolution (2020) is dedicated to a popular style of dancing that developed in Iran in the 1980s despite the ban on dancing, and subverts traditional gender roles. This dance style was inspired by illegally distributed dance and fitness videos by the Iranian dancer Mohammad Khordadian, who was living in exile in Los Angeles.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Dance After the Revolution, from Tehran To L.A., and Back,,
2020. Single channel colour video, sound, 36 minutes and 27 seconds. Edition of 7 (+3 AP)
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
The artists grew up during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), a fact that continues to shape their lives and artistic work until today. On a large curtain with the title My Son, My Crown (2020), one can see a presentation of a photograph of a mother carrying the mortal remains of her son, who went missing in that war and was found again ten years later—a topic that is also approached by the just as haunting poem Boys and Animals.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, My Son, My Crown, 2020. Print on silk, 405 x 520 cm
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
The two sculptures Alluvium, March–June 2020 (2020) also come from the same context: they consist of steel frames with ceramic plates on which the artists painted and collaged motifs from the stream of media reports of these months.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Alluvium, March-June 2020, 2020. Acrylic, gesso, ink,
watercolour, pencil, gouache, collage on clay plates and iron. Set of 20 plates, 125 x 106 x 36
Source: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Either He´S Dead Or My Watch Has Stopped: Groucho Marx (While Getting The Patient’s Pulse), installation view
The exhibition presents, for instance, 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 the Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Either He´S Dead Or My Watch Has Stopped: Groucho Marx (While Getting The Patient’s Pulse), installation view
The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian’s first solo show. The installation debuts a monumental site specific floor painting – a dense web of detailed narratives and references supplemented by sculptures and video works.
The title of the exhibition Either he’s dead, or my watch has stopped: Groucho Marx (while getting the patient’s pulse) cites the film classic A Day at the Races (1937) by the Marx Brothers and the basis for the artists’ Moving Paintings are, in turn, pictures archives of photographs and media reports that the artists have compiled themselves.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Either He´S Dead Or My Watch Has Stopped: Groucho Marx (While Getting The Patient’s Pulse), installation view
The landscape they represent returns again and again 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 grotesque that reflect the abstruse nature of the global world.
The basis and center of the trio’s artistic work is their house in Dubai. In the process of living and working together, they create their artworks and exhibitions there—frequently in exchange with friends or other artists. In line with this principle, the exhibition also includes two textile sculptures by Franco-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol.
Corresponding to their definition of the collective, Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian each work in their own style both together as well as independently.
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Either He´S Dead Or My Watch Has Stopped: Groucho Marx (While Getting The Patient’s Pulse), installation view
A welcome note from the artists
The exhibition is on view at The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt until the 13th of December.
Check the above gallery for a guided tour.
