Alluvium

Ramin Haerizadeh Rokni Haerizadeh Hesam Rahmanian

Curated by Samuele Piazza

On the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2022 – 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, OGR Torino returns to Venice, in the spaces of the Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, presenting for the first time in the lagoon the trio of Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian for a new site-responsive project: Alluvium.

Following the OGR Prize at Artissima 2017 supported by Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, and the 2018 exhibition Forgive me distant wars for bringing flowers home, the project marks a new stage in the collaboration between the Dubai-based collective and OGR. The exhibition project, brings together a number of new productions, developed by the artists over the past two years.

The works of Ramin, Rokni and Hesam are the result of a process of re-elaboration and negotiation, in a stratification of conceptual and material levels that add up to give life to artworks in constant transformation. Their research starts with objects that accumulate to create a mental and physical landscape. Like collectors, in the flow of cultural images and information they create new possible constellations to develop new narratives. A practice that recalls the very context of Venice, a European city bridge to the East, grown over the centuries in a continuous sedimentation of aesthetics and contributions from various cultures.

Alluvium is a series of iron sculptures, created by the artists in collaboration with blacksmith Mohammed Rahis Mollah in Dubai, which hold terracotta plates, produced by local craftsmen according to Middle Eastern tradition. On the plates the artists' paintings – resulting from the rewriting of images from the news – create a new imagery, an alternative record of the present in delicately balanced compositions and constellations.

The title Alluvium refers to clay, to the silt deposited by running water, it refers to the materiality of the terracotta paintings, and metaphorically to the remaining of a more abstract flow: the detritus of the stream of news, cultural images and history, scanned by the artists and sometimes collected to gain new life, in an act of resistance and counter-narration.

A project by OGR Torino

Supported by Fondazione CRT

With the contribution of Galerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris