Fictionville. Rokni Haerizadeh

A large-format, lavishly illustrated monograph on one of Iran's most internationally renowned contemporary artists.
Rokni Haerizadeh is a painter known for his compositions, often in sets or themes, which weave together ancient fables and literary figures, contemporary film and political history. His oeuvre traverses various media including assemblage and performance-based work, in which he often collaborates with his brother Ramin.
Rokni earned an MA from the University of Tehran and has held solo exhibitions in Dubai, Istanbul and Tehran. He participated in Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, Saatchi Gallery, London (2009) and Be Crowned with Laurel in Oblivion, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (2010), Sharjah Art Foundation Biennial, UAE (2011).
He lives in Dubai.
This publication documents and elucidates Rokni Haerizadeh's ongoing Fictionville series and his 2010-2011 animation "Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?". Devoid of pitiful moralizing and surpassing fetishistic infatuation with depictions of human sordidness, in the series Fictionville Rokni Haerizadeh cunningly violates and perverts found photographic media images depicting human suffering into an anthropomorphic Orwellian world of fairytales: humorous, grotesque, satirical, bitter. The book features a large selection of Fictionville images and stills from the video animation, of which one edition has been recently acquired by Tate Modern Gallery, London.