In the Ospedaletto Complex, in Barbaria de le Tole, 6691, in Venice, you enter a forest with strange trees-shrubs on which there are, just like fruits, plates painted with monstrous, distorted, disjointed figures. Unrecognizable dialogues between animals and humans, disastrous places, incomprehensible writings, various monstrosities are here present, as usual for this group of artists. It is the Alluviumexhibition, a site-specific project by OGR Torino which presents the artworks by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. The artists reject the concept of the artist-genius, preferring to recognize the implication of all those involved in the process of making the work – from other artists, to carpenters, technicians or light designers – as part of the process of developing a shared and collaborative environment that is decisive in creating something new. Their collaborative practice represents a radical redefinition of the collective, in order to incorporate friends, writers, artists and musicians. Their work includes performance, installation, painting and sculpture.

The exhibition entitled Parthenogenesis by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian was recently inaugurated, the 1^st March, and it is enjoyable untile 12^th June 2022, at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery. Maya Allison, executive director of the quoted art gallery and chief curator of the University, affirmed:«The word “parthenogenesis” comes from biology and describes a beginning that has no cause. However, art does not live in vacuum: it shapes, and it is shaped by multiple forces, as it is done in this exhibition. Parthenogenesis is a testament of the thirteen years spent by the artists in Dubai, who lived and worked together, creating a landscape and a tapestry of ever-changing ideas and dialogues with collaborators, artists and visitors to their home, offering a deeper insight into their practice which is rooted in the ideas of transformation, collaboration and play».In addition to the spring exhibition, Allison is curating the UAE National Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice.

With OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni, an art institution in Turin, in September 2018, the trio presented Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home – verse taken from the poem Under One Small Star by Wislawa Szymborska. An exhibition itinerary that tried to give an interpretation to the artistic practice of Ramin, Rokni and Hesam, focusing on their work methods and on the process of creation and communication of the artworks.

In conjunction with the 2022 Venice Biennale of Art, the trio presents Alluvium, an exhibition consisting of a series of structures that the artists created in collaboration with a Dubai-based blacksmith, Mohammed Rahis Mollah. These iron sculptures hold a series of terracotta plates, produced by local artisans, according to the Middle Eastern tradition. The plates welcome the paintings by the artists creating compositions and constellations in delicate balance.

The paintings on the plates are the result of a rewriting of the images coming from the news: the flow of images to which we are exposed and which goes to compose an official narrative is contrasted by a rewriting that traces an alternative recording of our times, creating a new imaginary to these representations; superimposing on the images to modify them, replicating them and redesigning them according to new geometric axes, as in Islamic ceramics, abstracting them with flat backgrounds as in Persian miniatures, they trace an unpublished portrait of the present.

The artists invited Kiori Kawai to choreograph the descriptions of the recent welded sculptures. In turn, the trio produces new sculptures themselves by staging and replicating Kawai’s choreography for Mohammed Rahis Mollah, who mimics them with a metallic form. The triangle of understanding that is created among welder, artists and dancer is based on the movement of the body, on dance: mimetic origin and, finally, in the call and response between the work and the visitor of the exhibition, whatever form it may take.

It has been said that the shared home by these three authors with their co-workers is a spectrum of public and private spaces and it is also the perfect example of how their practice develops in a continuum, in which living and working spaces are used to continuously testing new ideas, in relation to each other and to the outside world.

Emanuele Magri

Info:

Various artists, Alluvium
curated by Samuele Piazza
in collaboration with OGR Torino
20/04/2022 – 27/11/22
Complesso dell’Ospedaletto
Barbaria de le Tole6691, Venezia