Roee Rosen
Roee Rosen is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker.
Biography
Roee Rosen studied philosophy and comparative literature studies in Tel Aviv University until 1984 and graduated with BFA from School of Visual Arts, New York in 1989. Rosen received MFA from Hunter College in New York in 1991.He is a professor at HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl College in Kfar-Saba and at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
His work has been described by Hila Peleg for Documenta 14 as creating "... an artistic universe that treacherously undermines the normative implications of identities and identifications through fictionalization, irony, and revision. In untold variations, he typically links current Israeli and world politics with mythical and political references to European and Jewish history. Using a vast array of fictional characters and iconographic motifs and codes, Rosen frequently refers to, and transforms, not only the canon of the historical avant-garde and transgressive traditions from the Marquis de Sade to Georges Bataille, but also popular media, political propaganda, and classic children's fairy tales."
Fictive characters
As part of his art, Rosen invented non existing artists. His first virtual artist was Justine Frank, a Jewish-Belgian surrealist painter who also authored the pornographic novel "Sweet Sweat." In both art and writings Frank combined explicit erotic imagery with Jewish tropes and magical elements, thus assuming a highly polemic and disturbing position. She later worked in Palestine despite appearing to be antagonistic to Zionism and refusing to speak Hebrew. The fabrication of the project entailed a book combining Frank's own novel with her biography and a theoretical essay, entitled Sweet Sweat. A retrospective of Frank's works was first shown in 2004. In the short film "Two Women and a Man", Roee Rose himself appears in drag as Joanna Führer-Hasfari, a scholar of Frank's work, and uses this guise to attack himself for appropriating Frank's legacy.Rosen's second major fictional artist is Maxim Komar-Myshkin, a pseudonym for Russian emigrant poet and painter Efim Poplavsky, born in 1978 and immigrated to Israel in 2003. Komar-Myshkin established the "Buried Alive" collective, a group of Ex-Soviet artists who disavowed the culture surrounding them, describing themselves as "Russian cultural zombies." The project thus entailed fabricating the work of the collective as well as that of Poplavsky. Komar-Myshkin, according to the story, suffered acute paranoia and believed he is persecuted by Vladimir Putin. In his major work, the album "Vladimir's Night." he takes his revenge on the Russian president. Produced in secrecy and supposedly discovered after the artist's death, it describes still objects assuming life so as to murder Vladimir. The second part of the book offers annotation by yet another fictive character, Rosa Chabanova, a hybrid of fiction, political writings and theory.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
- 2022–2023, Kafka for Kids and Other Troubling Tales, Kunstmuseum Luzern
- 2019–2020, Roee Rosen, The Mosquito-Mouse and Other Hybrids, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.
- 2019, Roee Rosen, "Exorcisms, Project Arts Centre," Dublin.
- 2018, "Roee Rosen – Histoires dans le pénombre", an expansive exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, was curated by Catherine David and Hila Peleg. The exhibition featured Rosen's early artist book, "The Blind Merchant", a complex retelling of "The Merchant of Venice," another artist book, "Vladimir's Night" by his fictive artist Maxim Komar-Myshkin, and Rosen's film "The Dust Channel". The exhibition also included "Roee Rosen: Douce Sueur," a retrospective screening program of Rosen's film in collaboration with Jeu de paume.
- 2016 Roee Rosen – A Group Exhibition, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2016, curated by Gilad Melzer and Joshua Simon. The exhibition featured Rosen's different personae as well as his films and books. Also in 2016 Rosen held a survey exhibition entitled "Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories", at the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg, Germany. Rosen's installation "Live and Die as Eva Braun" was first exhibited at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it caused controversy, concerning the representation of the holocaust.
- 2012, Vile, Evil Veil, INIVA Institute of International Visual Arts, London.
- 2011, The Dynamic Dead Roee Rosen, Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Curated by Stach Szabłowski, this was the first retrospective of the artist.
- 2009, Justine Frank, a Retrospective, Extra-City, Antwerp. Curated by Hila Peleg.
- 1997, Live and Die as Eva Braun, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Rosen also held numerous one person exhibitions in Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv, The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and other venues.