Film program and book launch

“The body is always the first to tell you when something is wrong; the somatic transgression usually comes tooyerst and tells you that a boundary has been crossed. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes an idea gives me this sweaty, uncomfortable feeling, and then I know it deserves my attention.” -Roee Rosen     

Roee Rosen – painter, writer and filmmaker – is an astute, critical voice in Israel whose works mainly deal with the representation of desire and structural violence. Born in 1963, he has created an artistic universe that mischievously subverts the normative implications of identities and identifications, resorting to fictionalization, irony and scrutiny. In countless variations, he usually links current political developments in Israel and around the world with mythical and political references to European and Jewish history. A wide range of fictional figures and iconographic motifs and ciphers not only enables the artist to repeatedly refer to and modify the canon of the historical avant-garde. Rosen also uses traditions that play with the violation of norms – from the Marquis de Sade to Georges Bataille – as well as popular media, political propaganda and classic children’s fairy tales. – documenta 14

The program, curated by Marcel Schwierin, presents an overview of Roe Rosen’s cinematic work in four works, beginning with the mockumentary Two Women and a Man, in which Rosen talks about his great cycle Justine Frankas well as himself and his artistic strategies, through to his most recent film The Dust Channelwhich premiered at documenta 14. Rosen’s latest book Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories which was published on the occasion of Roee Rosen’s first solo show in Germany at the Edith-Russ-Haus.