RAMIN HAERIZADEH, THE MELANCHOLY OF THE EVERYDAY

About

studio1.1 is pleased to present exciting new work by renowned Iranian photographer Ramin Haerizadeh, in his first solo show in the UK. He entered Tehran University in 1994 to study Economics but soon gave up to pursue his life long interest in photography. He then studied under the celebrated Iranian photographer Massoud Ma'ssoumi. Haerizadeh is inspired by various aspects of his heritage, from literature to paintings to daily interactions with friends, using irony to make a strong political point often with the pictorial subtlety of the Persian miniature. He takes as his starting point the normal stuff of photography - people relaxing or at play, posing or caught off-guard, then obsessively manipulating the image, distorting it till it speaks an inner truth. Sometimes the exact redoubling of the image cracks the scene open, turns the whole set-up inside out, the absurd symmetry of the mirroring slicing through the recording of the everyday, bringing to the surface the internal contradictions of a fissured society. In one series these habitual (perhaps protective) distortions extend the thick patterning of fabric to pull the human figure deep inside it, giving the image an all-over abstract force, while in another series the manipulations are slyer, leaving the main image untouched but attacking incidentals, details that catch the eye and retrospectively re-order our (pre-)perceptions. Our assumptions were wrong. Again, this is no longer normal life. At the basis of this work is Haerizadeh's firm sense of the ludicrous and of the ludic. The hedonism of these lolling bourgeois figures would be in any case darkened by what stays outside the frame, the current context of a theocratic regime in strict control of life beyond the front gate. 'Everyday', in this life, is played out in the constant shadow of melancholy; concealing to reveal. Tame in Santa Monica perhaps, deeply subversive in Tehran and in London a subtle challenge to our need for immediate gratification.