Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to present At 9:15 am Sunday 28 May 1967, Reza Aramesh’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. In titling this exhibition, Aramesh specifies the time and date of a particular event – leaving out the location. His choice of deliberate geographical ambiguity invites the viewer to be part of the intimacy of the scene, searching to acknowledge the commonality of human suffering whilst immortalizing an event or Action, as Aramesh titles them, of unnamed rebellious subjects. 

The exhibition features three bodies of sculptural work and continues upon Reza Aramesh’s interdisciplinary practice of representing the abjection of human bodies sustained during armed conflict and torture. Aramesh blends classical aesthetics with anonymous figures from the contemporary moment, thereby bringing to the fore the victims who have been rendered invisible, yet at the same time questioning the traditional representation of suffering throughout the Western art historical canon. While this reading of history has trained us to translate the suffering of iconic religious figures into martyrdom and therefore a noble calling, the overwhelming volume of mass media images of the everyday victims of war and violence has rendered us immune to these anonymous victims.