18 Minutes

Group exhibition:
Gilad Bar Shalev, Miriam Yuhvetz, Lali Katz

Curator: Keren Zaltz

25 January 2024 - 24 February 2024

18 Minutes

Group exhibition: Gilad Bar Shalev, Miriam Yuhvetz, Lali Katz

Curator: Keren Zaltz

Gilad Bar Shalev, Miriam Yuhvetz, and Lali Katz have expanded the boundaries of their work as creators into collaboration and a new conceptualization of the pool of images that comprises their works. The starting point of the exhibition 18 Minutes is the time period that separates between sunset and the first appearance of the stars, which according to Jewish tradition lasts 18 minutes. The transition between day and night is characterized by a continuum of astronomical phenomena, which together constitute the end of one day and the beginning of a new day. 

In the exhibition, this special time period is translated into an intermediary space of occurrences where the encounter between works evades clear, sharp boundaries, and the different parts merge and spill into each other. The echoing of one work in the others generates a closed internal system of symbols, archetypes, colors, and contrasts. 

A photograph by Bar Shalev becomes a drawing by Yuhvetz, and Katz draws objects that recur in the drawings and photographs of Yuhvetz and Bar Shalev.

The images in the works are located in a world where dichotomies have dissipated, and clear gaps have ceased to exist. They represent a melting of time and place within a world of diversity, contrasts, and contradictions. The intermediary space of the 18 minutes enables control and changes in nature and symbolizes the human power of expression and creation: adolescent girls in the moments of passage from childhood to maturity, father and daughter who appear as if they came from different eras, the she-ass that transformed from an inferior creature to a spiritual animal. 

The exhibition presents outdoor photos and portraits by Bar Shalev which were shot in a documentary style that corresponds with American mid-twentieth century photography. Katz presents stop-motion technique video works and charcoal and graphite drawings. Yuhvetz presents ink drawings and sculpture.

The broad and dominant range of shades of black and white in the exhibition marks the greatest extremes: the transition between the end of the day and the night’s revelation. This dramatic moment, between the quotidian and the sacred, between the world of nature and the world of wonder, sheds a pleasant light on the extraordinary and the enchanted.

About the artists and the curator
Gilad Bar Shalev (b.1981) studied photography at Hadassah Academic College from 2004 – 2006. Following his studies, he worked in New York as a photographer assistant and in 2008 he opened a photography studio in Tel Aviv. Bar Shalev is a member of the Indie Photography Group Gallery, and he writes a regular column in the newspaper Haaretz’s photography blog. His first book, “Quotes and First Impressions”, was published in 2020, and led to a solo exhibition that year. Bar Shalev works in a range of formats, including film cameras. His practice is to photograph people in their familiar, natural surroundings. His documentary photography style and primarily his portraits, correspond with the aesthetic of mid-twentieth century photographers. He is unique mostly in his respectful and kind treatment of his subjects, his direct and frank approach towards them, and a balance between entering their worlds and maintaining their personal space.

Miriam Yuhvetz (b. 1975), holds a BA in Visual Communications from the Tel Aviv Design Study Center. Through drawing and installation, Yuhvetz creates scenes adorned with fantastical creatures and nature, influenced by the world of art, toys, and animals. Everything comes together into a new microcosm concerning relationships and connections replete with wonder and play amongst the familiar and quotidian. In neon-plastic-fluorescent colors, Yuhvetz emphasizes and narrates mythological stories composed from her own life as an artist, mother, and woman. Her works have been exhibited in museums and galleries in Israel and throughout the world, as well as in private collections.

Lali Katz (b. 1973), was born and raised in Los Angeles. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. Katz is a graduate of the Avni Institute of Art and Design (2008). The transition between cultures, as well as the feeling of foreignness and alienation, characterize her work and appear in her paintings through the relationship between the figures and the fantastical background. The scenes serve as a receptacle, a means for conveying her inner world of memories and trauma. Katz conceives painting as something one must strive for, a working process that lasts an entire lifetime. For her, painting is an emotional process which like gambling contains excitement, fear, and energy, following which the moment of truth arrives, where all the elements come together into a single creation.

Keren Zaltz (b. 1981) lives and works in Ramat Gan. She is an artist and the curator of the Indie Photography Group Gallery. She studied in the BFA program at the Hamidrasha Faculty of the Arts between 2004 – 2008, and in the Interdisciplinary MA Program in the Arts at Tel Aviv University from 2010-2015. She is a lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. 

Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day;
End – Edge – Addendum.

18 Minutes is the fourth exhibition of the 2023-2014 exhibition season, presented on the subject of the trilogy Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day; End – Edge – Addendum. Today’s times are characterized by a sense of urgency which can lead to one-dimensionality, yet also invites a complex, “multi-focal” analysis. One cannot discuss the present without considering the past and building the future. 

End: There is a sense that the imminent end is lingering in the air, boundaries have been crossed, the world order has been upended, and doubt has now been cast on assumptions that were once axioms. That which was once taken for granted is no longer certain. What is good and what is bad? How can one distinguish between the two? The word “end” signifies the finishing part, the point where the thing ceases to exist. 

Threshold: The threshold is a gate, an opening one must pass through in the struggle to restore meaning, decorum, and standards. In order to recover, one must consent to sojourn in threshold spaces, in destruction and uncertainty. One must agree to touch upon loss, compromise, and change. One must push up against the edges and taste the ashes.

Addendum: Lingering within a sense of destruction, anxiety, and horror enables, in the end, hope to sprout. From wallowing in the depths, the cracked and broken areas, and from disease, separation, loss, and collapsed systems, a seed sprouts, breathing new life into the consciousness and the body and helping to identify the strength embodied within them.