Yehudit Sasportas Loan

28.03.2018

Loushy | Art & Projects "No More Reality" Group Exhibition

Curated by Marc Scheps

We are pleased to loan Yehudit Sasportas' magnificent work for the "No More Reality" exhibition hosted by Loushy Art & Projects and curated by Marc Scheps. Please visit the exhibition page for more information.

Yehudit Sasportas "Fan #8"

"With Fan #8 by Yehudit Sasportas, we proceed to a work that is both painting and object. The open fan, of huge dimensions, ceases to serve as an object that produces air and has become a surface on which the artist has created her mountaintops. The open fan’s wooden strips form a semicircle and create a sense of light dispersed to infinity. The result is a kind of unity and wholeness that eliminates the need to define the type of work."

Installation imageInstallation image courtesy of Loushy | Art & Projects

"No More Reality" exhibition text | Written by Marc Scheps

The words "No More Reality" hover in space and become the very substance of this exhibit. MK Kaehne’s statement is obviously open to interpretation. If there is no more reality, does that mean that reality no longer exists, or has a work of art rendered it null and void and created an imaginary reality? A parallel question hovers in the air as well: What is the connection between reality and the art world? Every artist in the exhibition responds to this question in his/her own way, creating works of art to link among one’s inner dreams, memories of reality and creativity. Kaehne’s words invite us to examine the essence of twenty-first century art.

This exhibition is based on my long-term interest in Loushy’s activities, based on a new kind of connection between artist and curator. Loushy invited artists to collaborate in special place-time projects in which the artists can reveal a new reality, deriving materials and inspiration from it for works reflecting their personal visions, thereby creating an innovative statement. Choosing from among an extensive variety of projects, I selected 12 artists whose works enabled me to identify fascinating points of similarity and difference alike. I identified three approaches that complement one another and form an integral whole when viewed together.

Noel Jabbour’s project, Maria Magdalena, is represented by two images: Jordan River — an image that blends into a mysterious and eternal landscape, a primeval scene in which Maria Magdalena, covered by her hair, recreates herself in this mystical photograph; in Dried out River — Maria is in the forest, again concealed by her hair, standing on rocks with her back to the viewer, gazing at light penetrating from above. Time stops in this photograph as Maria awaits Eternal Revelation.

From Elger Esser’s project from Shivta to Lifta, I chose See Genezareth II [The Sea of Galilee], in which a narrow strip of land separates (or joins?) the heavens and the water that reflects them. This is an infinite landscape, a serene, complete location, a place for introspection. All shades of color in this photograph are transparent, flooded with inner light. Jabbour the Palestinian and Esser the German express the spirituality of the Holy Land, to the deeper layers imprinted in the country’s landscape. Both chose to do so via the medium of photography that rendered the landscape picturesque, sensitive and mysterious.
With Fan # 8 by Yehudit Sasportas, we proceed to a work that is both painting and object. The open fan, of huge dimensions, ceases to serve as an object that produces air and has become a surface on which the artist has created her mountaintops. The open fan’s wooden strips form a semicircle and create a sense of light dispersed to infinity. The result is a kind of unity and wholeness that eliminates the need to define the type of work.

From Michael Druks’ project View. Material. Thought. I chose two works that examine the possibility of rescuing a painting from the wall that entraps it, eliminating its passivity and integrating it into the space of life. The name of the work, Painting, emphasizes the point of departure, but the work itself is essentially a rug placed on the floor, bearing a pair of shoes. The painting indeed maintains its identity but has become a functional object on which one may leave shoes. Druks proposes a different reading without forgoing the painting, enabling expansion of the boundaries of its actuation as part of everyday behavior. The second Druks work selected, Performance, consists of two paintings hanging freely on hooks like those used for aprons or towels. Druks tests the conventions of art criticism and proposes that we look at the connection between painting and reality, between canvas and space, between the second and third dimensions.

From Nahum Tevet’s project Under the Surface, I selected Table # 6 (with perforated chair). Before us is a rectangular surface supported by feet, painted half black and half blue. Beneath it is a complex entity that is difficult to follow, although the title of the work assists us in identifying the chair hung horizontally. The table and chair are not presented as objects that fulfill their purposes, but rather as concepts that refer to reality. Their function in the work is to conceal and to be concealed and to create a space that enables fulfillment of this dual function. Above, the horizontal rectangle is empty; below it, a dense static installation with extensive dynamics and dialectics between the visible and the unseen, between free-standing and hanging objects, between the open and the closed. Tevet tests the boundary between simple and complex, between imaginary and material.

The title of Daniel Bauer’s work, 125% Mattress, precludes its interpretation as a minimalistic work and directs us to the object on which all who dream at night rest their bodies. But Bauer chooses to show us a stained and damaged mattress, crosshatched and monochromatic, reminiscent of a Manzoni painting. This is a large mattress, a work whose material is palpable, with a fine boundary between painting and object. Bauer wants no clear definitions. He is creating artistic reality and proposing that it be addressed without defining narrow categories. He wants us to dream with eyes wide open the same as we dream with eyes closed when we lie on our mattresses.
Pavel Pepperstein’s project Over the Desert constitutes an ambitious attempt to bridge between two different and distant spiritual worlds. The small watercolor Buddha Arch in Jerusalem displays a huge brown gate at the center of the landscape, the empty space of which recalls the image of Buddha. Tiny items hint at hills, camels and more. This conceptual painting imagines the effect of Buddhist philosophy on reality that constitutes the artist’s own truth: Buddha is not seen, but is present by virtue of his absence. Earthly Jerusalem is beyond the hill and blue skies can be found anywhere on earth. The power of a painting is its ability to describe the invisible and the non-existent and to accord them presence.

Blister by Aya Ben Ron recalls embroidery from some exotic land, but a closer look reveals to us a fascinating combination of three spheres: Human, botanical and cosmic. The three are combined in circular motion, hovering in space and inseparable from one another. The work comprises hundreds of three-dimensional items precise in their splendid color and spherical symmetry. The artist creates her own cosmos and we sink within it, revealing more and more themes, connections and links in the map of Ben Ron’s enchanting internal world.

From the project Bin There by Max Frisinger, we present the work entitled Dismantling, a brown monochromatic relief. The title notes an act of deconstruction, but a closer look reveals trash bins that have been melted down and reassembled in rectangular form. Instead of throwing the bins away, Frisinger ordained new existence for them as raw material for assembling his work. They indeed nearly lost their identity, but their color and crushed form both preserves their memory and renders it forgotten: They are no longer trash bins, nor are they a picture, but a point of encounter between reality and art. Since Marcel Duchamp, the world of art has been coping with, studying and reinventing—each time anew—the connection, proximity and distance between art and life. In Frisinger’s work, the connection passes between the object’s destruction and rebirth with an artistic identity.

The image of man was a central challenge in the history of sculpture. I chose three works that address this issue. MK Kaehne created a three-dimensional installation called Suit, placing emphasis on the matter of attire. He dresses a casting of his body, in the image of a human being, in clothing that constitutes a combination of business suit and military uniform, causing a confusion of identities. To avoid further identification, he hides some of its head, leaving us with an uncertainty that raises many questions. We see only an external appearance, while the person’s face is unseen and unknown. On the other hand, dual identity is not a rare phenomenon. Is it true or false? Or both? Can art reach the truth of a person? Moreover, the dressed image, with all its accessories, poses a threat and demonstrates presence that cannot be ignored. The work moves us to consider the manner in which we look at the world, as well as the way we view works of art.

Philip Rantzer’s Feet up reminds one of the circus of life, of the absurd, the impossible, that comes true at times nevertheless. A pair of upside-down bronze legs, painted white, wearing real shoes with two balls in motion on their soles. The shoes are not intended for walking; they stand on a base. This ironic yet human situation may constitute an attempt to assess an implausible, illogical reality. The function of art is to invent new, unconventional ways of connecting reality with imagination and creativity.

Igael Tumarkin sculpted Hanoch Levin’s head in cast aluminum that he also painted over, thus acting simultaneously as sculptor and painter. The grooves etched into Levin’s skull and face seek the deep, combined truth of both author and artist. If I may quote Tumarkin, who recalls Levin’s words:” you have brought poetry to the scraps among which are the scraps of my face". Igael penetrated deeply into the human and artistic truth that originates in Levin’s words: “The Citizen Levin, poet most marvelous in ugliness.”

Location: Loushy | Art & Projects 5 Ma'avar Yabok, Tel Aviv