Rokni Haerizadeh: Reign of Winter

Yallay Gallery’s exhibition on Iranian artist Rokni Haerizadeh is centered on the singular rotoscope video work Reign of Winter (2013).

The animated film—based on the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton—is made from thousands of images stills downloaded from Internet and retouched by hand with acrylic paint in a demonstration of extraordinary fantasy.

The rotoscope video technique based on thousands of hand painted images allowed Haerizadeh to create a new medium which he calls moving paintings: “A painting is usually received by the viewer and by the critic as a fixed and static object, with the entire process of generating the work far removed from the final piece. It’s important for me to add this element of ‘time’, to slow down the process and to make that process visible. In this way, the painting unfolds before your eyes and transforms gradually.”

The movement, pulse and vibration in the video succession of individually painted drawings differentiate this medium from both paintings and pure video works. There is a physical bodily engagement of the artist when he sketches a line of drawings in front of him in a rhythmic way, not unlike the practice of Jackson Pollock or Lucio Fontana.

“Reign of Winter” (2013), and the later rotoscope video “Letter!” (2014) which addresses the Femen protest, both point to the underlying ideology that is consumed by such voyeuristic, media-powered spectacle.

Yallay Gallery’s presentation of Reign of Winter in an ex-British colony—whose citizens had been subjects of Her Royal Majesty for 150 years—gives its audience the opportunity explore the magic and irony of Haerizadeh’s art with a sense of nostalgia and critique of the former British rule.

The exhibition will feature a large video projection of Reign of Winter, detailed sequences on three video monitors, the painted preparatory pages for the video, as well as paintings based on the royal wedding.

150 unique ‘artists books’ will be produced in conjunction with the exhibition. Each book will consist of a portfolio of ten original paintings on paper by the artist that were completed as part of the production of the rotoscope video.