Participating artists: Larry Abramson; Zoya Cherkassky; Maya Cohen Levy; Yoav Efrati; Gideo Gechtman; Moshe gershuni; Itzhak Golombek; Irit Hemmo; Yitzhak Livne; Sharon Poliakine; Philip Rantzer; Simcha Shirman and Gal Weinstein.
What happens when a painter, sculptor or photographer makes a video work? What happens in the transition from one’s “original language” to another language? What happens during the translation process of plastic works into movement? Does the practice of translation emphasize or dilute the “original language”? Can an artistic medium lose its relevancy? And what links are there between various media and which gap is created by the transition from one language to another? The exhibition proposes an examination of the boundaries and definitions of art as subordinated to the medium in which it’s made, on the one hand; and on the other, an examination of an act of translation and replacement. This thought involves questions of choice and dependency: Is an artist’s action in a medium inherent to the work itself or is it a product of state of mind and means? To what extent the choice is objective? Does it really belong to the object? Similarly, the act of translation must be taken into account as far as the definition of the “curatorial work” is concerned. I’ve approached artists of various generations, all prominent in the field of Israeli art and identified with their medium of choice. The exhibition consists of new video works, presented here for the first time. During the work process, I’ve assisted, as a curator, in photographing and editing the works suggested by the artists. The process’s points of departure were the wish to examine the transition possibility from one medium to another as well as the desire to undermine the skepticism concerning its artistic validity.
Curator: Ruti Sela