Roee Rosen

Curators: Vered Hadad and Dveer Shaked 


January 2021


The solo exhibition "They're Saying I am Not Really Me" will for the first time collect self-portraits from various periods and projects of the artist Roee Rosen. The negation of the 'I' in favor of fictional identities is a central element in the artist's work. The exhibition will follow how Rosen combines fiction and reality as he assimilates himself into these various characters he creates or depicts, tying himself to their fate.

The exhibition will feature, among others, a self-portrait as Justin Frank, as a partner of Liliana Pereira from the victims of the Argentine generals' regime, as a painter and writer Maxim Komar-Mishkin, as historical and religious figures, from the martyr Lucy to Eva Brown, like animals, objects, and more. The way in which the works form a self-portrait can be direct, with Rosen combining his face as the face of the characters he creates, or indirectly, as a mention of his name or in more complex word games. Thus the monkey looking at a mirror or pretending to be a martyred saint and the parasitic hybrid of a mosquito-mouse that was supposedly painted by Maxim Komar-Mishkin (in Russian: Komar and Mish = mosquito and mouse), are also self-portraits of Rosen.