The Submersible series, presents the use of disposable pizza boxes as substrate, embellished on plastered surface with drawings, collages and paintings. These works were first created for the Liverpool Biennale in 2016 and the pizza boxes were discreetly hidden within other sculptures, acting as a kind of Trojan horse, within the frame of a larger exhibition.
By painting, collaging or drawing on the boxes the mundane objects are given a new visual outlook and serve new function. In his series, Ramin Haerizadeh, used a transfer collage to create dreamy and eerie scenes that are a contradiction to the mundane and regularity of a brown cardboard pizza box. A selection of grey faces and bodies applied through a transfer collage overlapped with patterned lines and spots drawn in marker. The collaged figures emerge with distinct pencil shading upon the thick white plastered background like a ghostly encounter, forming a sense of mysticism and portraying an impeccable softness.
Functioning as representations of void or emptiness, beneath the surfaces of these pizza boxes reveal a lifeless and hollow interior. This vacancy, not just in a physical sense but emotionally, eludes to an image or a facade of something which maintains an empty internal body that resonates with a certain absurdity of meaninglessness. While this artwork addresses a certain satire that plays with the distinction of fine art as refuse or refuse as fine art, in reusing a pizza box to not only create an artwork yet transform and elevate itself into something imbued with prominence and stature.