ArtFocus 5

Art Focus 5 Opened!

rachel — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:55:28 +0000

In the presence of 1500 guests, Art Focus 5 “Can Art Do More?” opened on Tuesday, September 23, 2008. The project will continue to show until October 23, 2008.

Ruth Cheshin, Jerusalem Foundation president, recieves explanation of his work by artist Ariel Shlesinger. Photograph: Sasson Tiram

Moroccan Artist Latifa Akshash rests on her artwork. Photograph: Sasson Tiram

rachel — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:48:18 +0000

We are happy to announce that we are officially here!

(even though there are still a few small corrections)

We look forward to seeing you at Art Focus 5, 24.9 - 23.10.2008

Multiple image test post

admin — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:23:49 +0000

Pascale-Marthine Tayou sees his work as constituting a battle for human rights in contemporary society. Tayou, who was a lawyer before becoming an artist, was disappointed to discover that human rights are not adequately protected. s he began making art, he decided to take an experimental approach. Combining the memory of his African heritage with harsh criticism of Western colonialism, Tayou replaced the clichéd materiality of his black culture with multimedia, which is combined with “performative” activity to form hybrid fetishes. His unique combination of traditional and ntemporary forms creates a brutal and provocative work concerned with the deconstruction of aesthetic conventions nd social practices. Tayou’s work is a breathtaking and shocking statement about exchange value in the age of globalization. The three objects featured in this exhibition resemble vestiges of his travels throughout the world – an ccumulation of urban garbage and totems composed of trash, which he has preserved as precise contemporary manifestations of consumer culture.

Ryan Gander

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:07:55 +0000

The 11 photographs that portray the preparations for the creation of A Sheet of Paper on Which I Was About to Draw, as It Slipped from My Table and Fell to the Floor, explore the various meanings of territory. Gander’s practice draws on multiple layers of fact and fiction: his own biography and art history, artistic processes and obscure fables come together to create myriad forms – sculptures, installations, printed texts and performances – that endow his work with the structure of fractured and opaque narratives. Through his preoccupation with form and with museum exhibition conventions, and his deconstruction of the modernist legacy, Gander focuses on the relations between the human condition and various social structures.

Loris Gréaud

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:58:38 +0000

The project Frequency of an Image was initiated in 2006, when Loris Gréaud decided to perform a neurological experiment and to record his own brain activity for a period of thirty minutes. Gréaud was then in the midst of another project, Cellar Door, which afforded him significant public recognition. His unusual activity in the space between art and science, and his dedication to various kinds of experiments, endowed his work with a unique quality. It served as the basis for a speculative aesthetic strategy that was concluded in the context of a comprehensive solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007). The current stage of the project Frequency of an Image involves the transposition of electric frequencies into vibrating sequences. The work’s central unit broadcasts brain waves to six miniscule vibrators, which are set into the exhibition space’s architectural structure. Seismic and other vibrations respond to the frequency of ideas, revealing the reciprocal interaction between the work and its viewers.

Maja Bajević

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:56:31 +0000

patients at the Pazaric Institute for Mental Health in Sarajevo, who sing Hollywood songs such as “As Time Goes By” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” “Hollywood is the symbol of a dream machine condemned to failing and appearing ridiculous when faced with reality,” the artist explains. “Parts of these songs have been edited into a whirlpool of images and sounds that surround the viewer on three sides. Vertigo has no narrative: it communicates on an emotional level, in an attempt to show how these stories no longer explain a thing. Hitchcock’s title merely serves to underscore the abyss between dreams and reality. […] We live in a world that suffers from amnesia, from the loss of ideology and values, a competitive jungle in which only the young, healthy, beautiful and rich – and the ones that keep silent – have the right to claim happiness. The rest are simply edited out of society. Like Hitchcock’s Vertigo , my work similarly begins with a trauma that leads to further trauma. There is no escape.”

David Maljković

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:54:51 +0000

Scene for a New Heritage (2006), the epic trilogy of films created by Croation artist David Maljković, presents a futuristic world ca. 2045. The first film, which was shot over a period of three years (2004–2006), focuses on a group of visitors to a memorial park commemorating the victims of the Second World War. During their visit to the site, they enter into an argument about its meaning – which has long been forgotten. In the second film, which takes place twenty years later, a boy is seen looking out from the memorial tower over an empty, snow covered landscape, as if in the midst of some spiritual pilgrimage. The third and last film captures adolescents moving aimlessly around the central tower of the abandoned memorial. This desolate site commemorating the history of the 20th century is transformed, for the visitors, into an empty shell. The film invites viewers to consider how the meaning of history and of historical monuments changes over time.

Uri Zohar

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:50:53 +0000

The film A Hole in the Moon (1964) has long gained mythical status, and its creator is considered to be a key member of his generation’s Israeli avant-garde. This work was originally conceived as a succession of sketches concerning the gap between ideal and reality, and between romantic adventure and commerce; it evolved into a strange and fantastic film, which simultaneously provokes feelings of transcendence and bitterness. As an ode to the obstinate denial of a tragic reality, its greatest achievement is a unique sense of humor. Two immigrants, one from Eastern Europe and the other from North Africa, build two kiosks in a desolate area frequented solely by Fata Morganas, which feature the ghosts of cinema itself. Suspended between different genres – a thriller and a Western, a documentary and a drama – A Hole in the Moon celebrates every possible cinematic genre, while majestically shattering the Israeli territorial mythology of conquering a barren land.

Simon Starling

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:48:10 +0000

Simon Starling’s film Short Story / Brief History (1999) tells the story of a silver fork, which is reduced to raw matter before metamorphosizing into another object. The camera lens mediates the integration of truth and fiction into one another: the absurd protraction of the production process and its subsequent notation pave the way for a fuller consideration of the social and cultural matrices in which these objects are usually embedded. Starling’s works are characterized by the detachment of objects from their context and surroundings and their subjection to a process of formal transformation; in this manner, he calls our attention to the original intentions and means of production that shaped them. The double projection features the same film, which is simultaneously played forwards and backwards – presenting the viewer with a visual palindrome.

Moshe Ninio

rachel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:46:13 +0000

Kythira (1996) is a video of a projection within a projection, which clumsily mimics a commercial pilot. As a tin can of honey is gradually emptied, we can discern – with increasing clarity – a projection of passersby that seem to have been captured by a CCT camera at a mall. The background noises are typical of non-places devoted to consumption. The work thus alludes to the exhibition site – a future shopping mall. This installation is shaped by Moshe Ninio’s signature manner of juggling the status of the vacant imageobject and its repeated mis-en-scene in non-places. In Shadow (Small Light Box) (2004), a paradoxical commercial for a kind of “carpet” composed of dry leaves, tree bark and other leftovers forms a semi-abstract surface. The critique, in this case, is not performed by means of the light box; the light box itself is the scene of the crime.