Distorted Messages
Asia Weksler / Daphna Shavit / Maya Zehavi / Shimrit Karni
Curator: Michal Kalisky
11.07.2019 - 10.08.2019
Distorted Messages
The main focus of the exhibition, deals with the frustrating human experience of the inability to maintain continuous communication and capture of the same way to all partners in the conversation. The artists focus on malfunctions processes of communication and messaging. The exhibition shows works that are watchful with the customary viewing mechanisms, the basic need to create meaning or message through images, and the options that the disruption offers.
In works that range from photography to video sculpture and installation, foreign implemented elements produce interference in reading the messages by disrupting the images and the “right” sequences of their appearance. The messages are converted, disintegrated, and conclusively are not spoken or heard, and thus a new interpretation is possible. These disruptions mark the illusion of understanding. In various forms of decomposition and separation, the image loss produces a position in relation to viewing itself.
The installation "Booth", which was created as collaboration by all the exhibiting artists, was built in inspiration by Snoezelen: a multisensory therapy method, designed to treat various disabilities of the central nervous system (intellectual developmental disability, mental retardation, dementia, mental illness, and autistic spectrum disorder). The method assists with developing communication skills by staying in an isolated space that stimulates the body's senses. "Booth" is an installation in the shape of a padded and darkened white cube, from which the gallery is seen through a Camera Obscura.
Maya Zehavi presents two video art works: one of which the focus moves undecidedly along the photo’s planes. In the second video art, the light of a scanner moves at a uniform pace, revealing scattered words that forms a fragmented poem that cannot be read as a one piece.
Shimrit Karni's installation titled "Night" depicts a repetitive single image, but each time it reappears another area is exposed. In addition, a video installation displays a static photograph of wild nature, a night shot with mechanical lights flickering on it, creating a sense of terror.
Daphna Shavit refers to the horizon in her work under the title "Swell". This is a minimalistic kinetic installation consisting of six panels moving in an uncoordinated motion. The skyline is broken and the image does not fully appear.
Asia Weksler presents several works in which the images were sabotaged in various ways: a geometric sculpture with a sun print depicting an image created by the shadow of a bush outside her home; a black box that preserves hidden images; an improvised light box with an image from a photography magazine, infused with gaudy lighting in its background, reveals its hidden side and adds to it random content.
MayaZehavi and Asia Weksler, present a collaborative work of images arranged in rows similar to how text is arranged. A single image is translated into a point and a line, and thus forms a text written in Morse.
About the artists and the curator
Shimrit Karni, born in 1982, lives and works in Tel Aviv. Graduated with honors from the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College, with B.Ed.FA degree. Karni is a multi-disciplinary artist with a photographic interest.
Asia Weksler, born in 1988, graduated with honors from the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College, with B.Ed.FA degree. Photography is her central medium. She teaches art and provides emotional guidance at Safra Children's Hospital.
Maya Zehavi, born in 1982, graduated with honors from the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College, with B.Ed.FA degree in the field of art, artistic mediums, photography and sculpture. Zehavi teaches art at Alon High School, Ramat Hasharon, and at the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College.
Daphna Shavit, born in 1988 graduated from the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College, with B.Ed.FA degree. Lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Michal Kalisky, graduated from the Hamidrasha School of Fine Arts, Beir Berl College, with B.Ed.FA degree. Works with ready-made materials and Performance. Works as an art guide at Moby, Bat Yam Museum, and at the Nahum Gutman Museum in Tel Aviv.
Burn the Bridges Down
The Last Feast is the fifth exhibition in the annual theme of 2019, which is dedicated to exhibitions relating to the concept Burn Your Bridges Down.
The word Bridge describes an architectural functional structure that connects two places, and is commonly used as a metaphor. The command Burn your bridges is used as a strategic plan in situations of siege or persecution.
Bridges symbolize physical and mental territories, changes and transitions between periods and interpersonal relationships. We are accustomed to thinking that the path to growth and progress must be based on creating continuity and bridging gaps. Sometimes, however, the only way to move on, to reinvent ourselves, to rise up like a phoenix from the painful memories, is to sever the relationship irreversibly. To burn the bridges so that we can no longer go back, in order to prevent demons from the past from continuing to persecute us.
In the 2019 exhibition we will examine the concept of burn your bridges down from a variety of aspects: personal, intimate, political, historical, gender and social.