Israel Museum Exhibition
Jerusalem, Israel. 2002
In January of 2002 the Israel Museum of Art in Jerusalem mounted an exhibition that featured four young Israeli artists working on the relation between Art and the original objects or situations that inspired it. These works trace the growing abstraction that accompanies the artistic process “in the journey from object to image.” Daniel Bauer showed 125% Mattress, his personal mattress enlarged, with every detail expanded and exposed to the impersonal gaze of the spectator. In Sharon Poliakine’s, Untitled 2001, a purple flower floats against a background that hints of lost landscapes. The flower is out of context, displaced, its meaning to artist and viewer floating away from all those related to its concrete, specific reality. Rotem Balva transformed an oil leak from a Jerusalem street into a life-size image of this leak made of cold tar. Placed on the white gallery floor, Leak 2000/3 becomes everything it wasn’t on the street – permanent, high-contrast, solid – an object demanding thought rather than inviting oversight. David Behar-Perahia’s piece, Experiment No. 3 invites the viewer into a small, entirely dark cubicle. Within it, after reorienting to the darkness, viewers first hear rhythmic dripping and see a dim source of light. Later, one perceives a translucent container, and eventually an image of blue sky and clouds appears. What is transformed here is the viewer, not the art object.