Mirror Hours

Neta Cohen

Curator: Dr. Revital Michali

21.07.22-19.08.22

Mirror Hours

Neta Cohen

Curator: Dr. Revital Michali

The exhibition Mirror Hours is a multi-layered installation comprised of objects, video screenings and sound. Through these elements, Neta Cohen shrouds the Alfred Gallery exhibition space in the guise of a home. The home is marked out by dividing the space into areas containing sculptural objects, which paraphrase familiar household objects. Through the sculptural objects, Neta Cohen quotes, dismantles, enlarges or shrinks the household objects, such that the viewer finds themselves in an uncanny space, familiar yet alien at the same time. In the exhibition Mirror Hours, Cohen examines the spaces of her life and surroundings in detail and finds herself in a paradoxical situation where she is situated inside the home yet observes her own life from the outside to the point where it becomes threatened and threatening.

In the Gallery's small exhibition space, the video Six to Six is screened in an endless loop. It is an animated film about a new mother's nocturnal wanderings around her home.

Motherhood, for Cohen, can be paralleled to the creative process: actions with no clear goal and no immediate response, which go on and on until proportions are lost and objects take on a new identity. Like the creative process, immersion in the act opens up new spaces and gives birth to wondrous worlds. Like Alice, who in the beginning is terrified by the familiar space which changes and becomes smaller or larger than its natural dimensions, yet slowly finds herself dancing to its rhythms, Cohen creates a new, fresh glance on the domestic space and invites the viewer to be charmed by the magic of the threatening.

About the artist and curator: 

Neta Cohen, animation director, illustrator and designer, lives in Tel Aviv. She holds BFA (2012) and MFA (2019) degrees from the Visual Communication Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and is a lecturer at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. Her films have been awarded international prizes and have been screened at important animation festivals in Israel and throughout the world, including the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Raindance, Slamdance, the Jerusalem Festival and more.  

Dr. Revital Michali, researcher, independent art curator and performance artist, lives and works in Tel Aviv. Michali holds a doctorate in Visual Art from Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on women’s art, performance and gender. 

Michali has curated and produced exhibitions and art events in Tel Aviv, Berlin and the United States, including solo and group exhibitions at the ID Festival and Bethanien Künstlerhaus in Berlin, Providence College Galleries in Providence and Alfred Gallery. She has also curated performance night events and festivals at the galleries: Circle 1 in Berlin and Kav 16 and Alfred in Tel Aviv. She has written and produced artist books and collectors’ catalogs and last year she became a member of the Alfred Cooperative Institute for Art and Culture. 

Exhibition Season: Flooded

The exhibition Mirror Hours is the third of the 2022-2023 exhibition season, dedicated to the theme: Flooded.

We live in an era that is flooded and flooding. The world is overflowing like a river. While we must flow with the current, we actually have trouble keeping our heads above water, especially with FOMO hovering above us. Boundaries melt in the spheres of the psychological / consciousness and the physical / corporeal / geographical. There are too many possibilities and choosing between them is confusing. 

Through the exhibition series “Flooded”, Alfred Gallery strives to anchor islands in the unending flow of events, images, talks and words. Although the flooding is uncontrollable, it is not passive. It is a conflict arena, an upheaval that threatens to spill over, it is movement, struggle and conciliation. We have asked artists for proposals and ideas for exhibitions and events that flood or are flooded, and consider different aspects of this exhibition season’s title.