TRANSIT

A group exhibition and joint live events by member artists of Alfred Gallery (Tel Aviv)
and Betonbox gallery (Düsseldorf, Germany), together with guest artists 

Alfred
Sharon Azagi, Liat Danieli, Ruti Singer, Revital Mishali, Emi Sfard, Efrat Rubin, Talya Raz, Rotem Ritov, and Lior Schur 

Guest artists
Yael Ben-Shalom, Hadas Duchan, Yael Meiry and Natalie Feldesman

Betonbox
Susanne Hille, Mavi Garcia, Hyacinta Hovestadt, Florian Zeeh, Mareike Piepel, Elena Kolbasina, Gabriele Kaiser-Schanz and Leonid Sokhranski

29.01.22-05.02.22

The exhibition will be open
from 2.2.22 till 5.2.22

Special Opening Hours
Wed 2.2 17:00-21:00 / Thu 3.2 18:00-22:00 / Fri 4.2 10:00-14:00 / Sat 5.2 11:00-15:00

Live events during the exhibition:

Lost & Found – A multi-layered dance performance

Saturday, January 29 at 20:30 and 21:00

The duet by Efrat Rubin and Rotem Ritov is a multi-layered correspondence held simultaneously in the present and past, in the gallery space and in video screenings. Efrat Rubin will perform in the gallery space, moving between audience members who will be invited to lay on the floor. Rubin will address both the audience and a video screening of Ritov, which will be projected on the gallery ceiling. The video was recorded in Berlin, based on guidelines by Efrat Rubin, in an effort to reproduce choreography Rubin created 24 years ago in Brussels, to the sounds of Bach’s “The Goldberg Variations”.

Entrance free of charge, registration required by email: alfred.hecht@gmail.com

Spaces are limited

_    

Art Washing

Wednsday, February 02, at 19:00
Thursday February 03 at 20:00
Saturday, February 05 at 13:00

Through hanging, wringing and bleaching laundry, Alfred member Revital Mishali explores questions related to washing. What is the correct way to launder objects, words, relations, connections, ideology, art and more?

_      

Live Acts Happening

Friday, January 21 from 13:30 to 17:00
Saturday, January 22 from 12:00 – 16:00

During the exhibition, we will conduct a variety of live painting, sculpture and performance acts. These acts will be performed simultaneously at the exhibition and gallery members Ruti Singer, Revital Mishali, Emi Sfard, Talya Raz and Lior Schur will respond in real time to the objects and acts surrounding them, as well as to each other. 

TRANSIT

The group exhibition Transit, and the exhibition events, are a cooperative effort by the collectives Alfred (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Betonbox (Düsseldorf, Germany). The Transit project will be exhibited throughout the Alfred Institute building: in the gallery and the public spaces. The exhibition and its events are rich in works in the mediums: video, sound, performance, sculpture, painting and live acts.

Cooperation between the collectives began in 2015 and has been exhibited at different points in time in Düsseldorf and Tel Aviv. The title for the third joint project, Transit, was chosen based on the unique challenges the pandemic has placed in our way. In light of continued restrictions on movement and communication difficulties, a conceptual alternative to physical display was conceived, and the restrictions were leveraged into an artistic challenge to realize a different kind of cooperation between the collectives. 

Artistic exploration was dedicated to the challenge presented by remote communication and the concept of “operating instructions”. The works, sent by Betonbox members as digital files or as texts containing operating instructions, served as a trigger for artistic reactions by Alfred members and the guest artists, some of which are the fruit of advance planning and some of which will come to fruition during the events. Some of the Israeli participants have created new objects that relate to the project’s title, while others will respond to the files that have been sent and the material presence of the exhibition works. 

The diverse works presented in Transit are based on exiting our comfort zones and relinquishing control. The works were created as a response, translation, intervention or interpretation of each other’s artistic ideas. The nature of the works and their installation in the gallery exposes the participants’ double role as creators and presenters, who also engage in a shared act in a shared space. Participants simultaneously give and react to operating instructions, as well as responding to each other and to a connection that has been woven in advance. 

Lior Schur will use the gallery space as a studio. She will create objects that respond in real time to the works displayed and the movement of visitors, in a dialogue with the operating instructions visitors leave her. Natalie Feldesman, who lives in Portugal, has created a video work designed to be projected on a plaster object. Due to restrictions preventing Feldesman’s arrival, Talya Raz will create the new plaster object according to instructions by Feldesman, on which the work will be projected. Ruti Singer and Talya Raz will reproduce a painting by Elena Kolbasina from Betonbox Gallery, according to instructions she has given them. In a live act before an audience, they will reproduce the painting using ink on a roll of rice paper hanging from the ceiling. The operating instructions include photographs and an explanation of the influences that inspired the painting, so they can create a painting in the same spirit. Efrat Rubin sent a file of dance sketches to Rotem Ritov who lives in Berlin. Ritov responded and filmed a video dance to which Rubin will respond in turn in a live dance in the gallery during the exhibition. Ruti Singer’s drawings depict personal possessions of Alfred members which contain meanings of transition between generations or between countries. Revital Mishali will join in and hang Singer’s drawings on a laundry line in the performance work “Art Washing”. She will also hang a Western Wall textured garment sculpture by Leonid Sokhranski of the Betonbox group. Sokhranski’s sculpture was transported to Israel in digital files. It will be printed in the gallery and reassembled on paper, in place of the original. Rotem Ritov sent a file of the work “Fuck Corona” from the “Black and Solve” series of works, accompanied by instructions on how to fill in the table of blank fields to reveal the hidden image. Print-outs of door photographs by Hyacinta Hovestadt from the Betonbox group will be projected on curtains through which visitors will pass. Each visitor will be able to choose the door image that suits them, through which they wish to pass. 

All this and more in the project Transit. 

About the galleries: 

Betonbox is a cooperative gallery operating since 2010 in Düsseldorf, Germany. It is comprised of permanent members and additional satellite artists who work with the group on different projects. The gallery is located in an aboveground bunker constructed during the Second World War. 

Alfred is a cooperative gallery operating since 2005 in Tel Aviv. It is comprised of ten member artists. During its first eight years, the gallery operated out of a number of exhibition spaces in the city. In 2014, it expanded and became a cooperative institute for art and culture, and has since been located in a three and a half floor building on Simtat Shlush which houses, in addition to the gallery, classrooms and studios for artists from different fields.

Exhibition Season: Present Continuous

Transit is the sixth exhibition of the 2021-2022 exhibition season, dedicated to the theme: Present Continuous. This year’s exhibition season will focus on our sense of reality, which was upended in the beginning of 2020, when competing forces of slowdown and momentum began acting simultaneously, distorting our sense of space and time. Since we were rendered incapable of comprehending the present or planning the future, we were compelled to exercise resilience, to develop coping mechanisms and to break free from old habits and paradigms – to learn to move continuously in the present continuous tense.

 The members of the Alfred Cooperative have invited artists to propose exhibitions which address the theme “Present Continuous”, either through artistic interpretation or through physical acts that echo into the future. The objective is to present artistic endeavours centered around uncertainty as a guiding principle - ideas that make use of rules and internal logic which impact on the progression and meaning of the exhibition; exhibitions that address issues of uncertainty with respect to the exhibition space or the timeframe of the exhibition and encourage live events held simultaneously in both the physical space of the gallery and the virtual space.