i love ikooki
Dvir Cohen-Kedar
Curator: Sharon Toval
16.10.2014 - 14.11.2014
The works in the exhibition, all of which were made in recent years, make use of varied media: large oil paintings on canvas, small ink drawings, animations and a sculpture. In addition, for the first time Cohen-Kedar will present a work of art that is an iPhone and iPad app*, which you can see after downloading it for free by scanning the QR code in the exhibition. Thus, your iPhone becomes a part of the exhibition space. With this application, the artist makes art accessible to anyone anywhere and lets you hold a piece of art in your pocket.
Cohen-Kedar's exhibition depicts a mythological world of the heroine ikooki, in which a fascinating psychoanalytic trio occurs. The exhibition reveals relationships between the three main characters: Panda, ikooki and Her Friend. Their relationships go through a repetitive motion of ascending and descending between the conscious and the unconscious, between the visible and the hidden, between truth and falsehood, and between the original and the copy. This triad relationship is existential and complex: Panda is a Godlike Creator, the unconscious mind, while the other characters represent a rise to a higher level of consciousness. It is a story without a story, a circular narrative that allows the simultaneous existence of all possible dyads.
It seems that Cohen-Kedar's characters are influenced from Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). It resembles Takashi Murakami's Supeflat art works, and hyper-realistic sculptures of Patricia Piccinini, who sculpts human and animal hybrids, which forms futuristic / mythological characters. Cohen-Kedar investigates the use of images drawn mass media.
Each one of us makes up personal myths. Our lives are no longer ruled by religious and national myths, as in ancient times. The personal myth is the means to deal with our misunderstanding of the creation and the universe, our passing through the physical world and coping with life and ourselves. The exhibition leaves space for interpretation and personal coping with our "self" in relation to our very own abyss.
* The app is awaiting Apple's app store approval and should be available to download for the opening event.
היד של המבט: היידגר בין תיאוריה ופרקטיקה, ד"ר דרור פימנטל.
מימזיס, הפסיכולוגיה של הציור המודרני, יגאל ורדי, עמ' 145.