Roee Rosen, Safe Zone, English, 2024, 53.3 X 80 cm, from the series The Gaza War Tattoos, © Roee Rosen
""Those of you who heard of me, know that I have built my entire career on lies, scandals, obscene pictures, fake identities. I have pretended not to be myself. No more. It is urgent to do the right, difficult thing,” says the artist in The Confessions of Roee Rosen (2007), portrayed by three illegal labor migrants. In Two Women and a Man (2005), on the other hand, Rosen appears in person, but as a fictitious female scholar delivering a television interview about Justine Frank, an obscure Surrealist painter who, in fact, never existed, yet her works are found in numerous collections. Aside from creating a cinematic narrative, Rosen has fabricated Frank’s whole oeuvre of oil paintings and gouaches, complete with personal photographs and a book (Sweet Sweat, Sternberg Press, 2009). Through her biography, he speaks of an impossible past and imagines a different present. Poetic as they are, Rosen’s works draw upon the extremes of human existence: life, death, and sexuality, deployed as one of the driving forces in his scenarios. Maxim Komar-Myshkin, another character brought to life by Rosen, is a Russian dissident artist and émigré. Obsessed with the thought of being assassinated by Vladimir Putin, Myshkin took his own life in 2011, leaving behind a series of gouaches conceived as a grim fairy tale—both a testimony to his own gripping paranoia and an ultimate act of retaliation—in which his nemesis is the victim of a delirious sequence of events as his unsatiated appetite for satisfaction blurs the borders between dream and reality."
Kunstverein Hanover
Roee Rosen, The Kafka Companion to Wellness
November 9, 2024 – January 12, 2025
Kunstverein Hannover,
Accompanying events:
- Roee Rosen (artist) & Henriette Gallus (deputy director Haus der Kulturen der Welt [HKW]), Artist Talk, November 8, 2024, 8:30pm
- Marcel Schwierin (director Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, filmmaker & curator), Das Grauen kommt heim, Introduction to Roee Rosen’s work with films and discussion, November 14, 2024, 6pm
- Marcel Schwierin (director Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, filmmaker & curator), Kalter Schweiß, Introduction to Roee Rosen’s work with films and discussion, December 4, 2024, 6pm
- Meron Mendel (director Bildungsstätte Anne Frank & author) & Saba-Nur Cheema (political scientist & author), Muslimisch-jüdisches Abendbrot. Das Miteinander in Zeiten der Polarisierung (2024), book presentation and discussion, November 28, 2024, 6pm
- Roee Rosen (artist), Ekaterina Degot (director & chief curator steirischer herbst), David Riff (senior curator steirischer herbst & author), Discussion, January 11, 2025, 6pm
- Cinematic screenings of Roee Rosen’s Kafka for Kids take place at the Kommunales Kino (KoKi) Hannover on: November 13, 2024, 5pm; December 11, 2024, 5pm; and January 8, 2025, 3pm.
Steirischer Herbst
Horror Patriae
September 12 – February 16, 2025
Neue Galerie Graz, Joanneumsviertel, 8010 Graz, Austria
IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture]
The Cake is a Lie
October 30, 2024 – January 12, 2025
Stichting IMPAKT, Centre for Media Culture, Lange Nieuwstraat 4, 3512PH Utrecht, Netherlands
His work was shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions: Stories in the Dark at Centre Pompidou Paris in collaboration with Jeu de Paume, 2018; Edith-Russ-Haus for Média Art, Oldenburg, Germany; 1646, The Hague, Netherlands; Kunstmuseum, Luzerne, Switzerland; Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel-Aviv; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark - he was part of Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria 2018 and 2024 and Documenta14 2017, Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece.
His filmic work was presented in numerous film festivals as Transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; FIDMarseille International Film Festival, Marseille; The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany; Viennale International Film Festival, Vienna; Rotterdam International Film Festival; DOK LEIPZIG, amongst others. Screenings in public institutions include BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2015), MUMOK, Vienna (2014), Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2013), Tate Modern, London, UK (2010).
The Buried Alive Cycle: videos and drawings was shown at Erna Hecey Gallery, Luxembourg in 2019.
DOSSIER – 32 GRANDE INTERVIEW
The Devilish Animism of Roee Rosen
L'animisme diabolique de Roee Rosen
Interview by Jean-Pierre Rehm
2023, pp. 32-41
Springerin – Issue 2/2019, Illiberal!, il.col., german/english
“You Are Right But I Disagree!” An e-mail exchange on current issues of artistic and curatorial freedom
„Du hast recht, aber ich sehe das anders!“ Ein E-Mail-Austausch zwischen Ana Teixeira Pinto und Roee Rosen – über die gegenwärtige Freiheit der Kunst, politische Antihaltungen und das Recht, sich zu verweigern
Ana Teixeira Pinto and Roee Rosen
2019, pp. 16-21
