Ramin Haerizadeh

The paintings of Ramin Haerizadeh are a hybrid, a telescoping of found photographs and lascivious or vociferating self-portraits. He first organises these images on the canvas, then recovers or smudges them with acrylic paint. This results in sumptuous polychrome compositions, between kitsch and black humour, between ornamentation and Dadaist subversion. The austere and belligerent emblems of the Islamic power meet the sumptuous iconography associated with the Pahlavi dynasty, highlighting the irrational succession of ideological and cultural paradigms in contemporary Iran.

Born in Teheran in 1975, very early on Ramin Haerizadeh developed a passion for cinema and the image. In 1994 he learned photographic techniques with the famous photographer Massoud Ma' ssoumi. He then worked as cameraman and contributed to the art and cinema columns of several Iranian publications until his first solo exhibition in Teheran, in 2003. 

Among numerous major shows, he has taken part in “Iran.com, Iranian art today” at the Museum für Neue Kunst in Freiburg in 2006, in “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle-East” at the Saatchi Gallery in London and “Iran Inside Out” at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York in 2009. 

Threatened by the censure of the Iranian political regime, he settled in Dubai in 2009 where he currently shares a studio with his brother Rokni, also a painter.