A frame in time

By BARRY DAVIS

Published: NOVEMBER 22, 2017 16:19

Updated: NOVEMBER 22, 2017 16:20

Sigalit Landau’s ‘Salted Lake’ video work ‘touches upon collective memory and pain.’ (photo credit: SIGALIT LANDAU) — Sigalit Landau’s ‘Salted Lake’ video work ‘touches upon collective memory and pain.’

(photo credit: SIGALIT LANDAU)

It seemed like an impossible task.

The Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv is clearly still in good health more than 40 years after it was founded by Shmuel Givon. It is now managed by his daughter, Neomi, at the original venue on Gordon Street, but five years ago she added an expansive display space on two floors on Elroi Street in picturesque Neveh Tzedek.

In this day and age of virtual art facilities, commercial art galleries are generally a dying breed, but Givon seems to be more than holding its own. Both outlets are currently hosting intriguing exhibitions, of very different ilks.

The Neveh Tzedek show serves as something of a Who’s Who of contemporary artists. The ground floor offers works by such local pantheon members as controversial painter and sculptor Moshe Gershuni and multidisciplinary abstract expressionist artist Raffi Lavie – neither of whom sadly, is still with us. Contributors also include 75-year-old Israel Prize laureate Pinchas Cohen Gan, 72-year-old Lavie disciple Yair Garbuz, and 78-year-old Israel Prize winner Micha Ullman. The stellar local offerings are augmented by iconic revolutionary German artist Joseph Beuys.

There is much to see and marvel at on ground level: Gershuni’s ability to invest his work with so much visual dynamism while feeding off local folklore; Lavie’s quirky tightrope walking between comic-strip art and graffiti; Canaanite Movement pioneering sculptor Yitzhak Danziger’s ability to present a world of thought and emotion with just a line or two; and Aviva Uri’s characteristic blood-red abstract drawings.

On a more tangible front, Oz Malul’s kinetic work should grab the visitors’ attention, and Einat Amir’s video installation offers something in the way of intriguing visual and sonic aesthetics.

But it is underground where the real contemporary, cutting-edge stuff is to be found right now, in the form of Yisrael Kabbala’s solo display. The exhibition exudes a sense of primordial energy, with not a little historical and personal backtracking thrown in. I caught Kabbala in the act, a few days before the opening, as he tried to get to grips with some of the abundance of motley objects he has accumulated over the years.

It seemed like an impossible task. How do you arrange dozens upon dozens of rusting agricultural and craftsmen’s implements, along with items of a more personal nature? Somehow, the 33-year-old artist managed to create a coherent offering, actually layouts, in plural. There are several groups on the walls and one on a table, in just about every shape, texture, product and implement imaginable.

They are seen alongside yesteryear’s ready-made objects, complemented by Kabbala works which fuse old and new, and seemingly incompatible substances and textures. There is something very feral about the display, but it also conveys a sense of tenderness and intimacy.

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If the impossibly diverse collections weren’t enough, Kabbala has a bunch of curious monochromatic drawings and paintings plastered across a long wall, featuring fetchingly portrayed anatomical details and others of a more romantic sort, and all in unexpected juxtapositions.

There appear to be all kinds of narratives running concurrently through the exhibition, while all clearly stem from the same, albeit multi-stratified, source.

Interestingly, as one walks towards the stairs that lead down to the Kabbala showing, one passes a row of minimalist Gershuni drawings from the late ’70s and early ’80s. The latter emanate a sanguinary sensibility which flows seamlessly down the steps and into the basement exhibition.

Meanwhile, over on Gordon Street, Givon has put together a photography exhibition which treads expansive terrain and, here and there, is evidently designed to set the pulse racing. The self-explanatorily titled “Photography: Still and Moving Image” show incorporates an impressive spread of outsized prints and a video work by internationally acclaimed artist Sigalit Landau.

“Still and Moving Image” started out as a tribute to French-born multidisciplinary artist Yossi Breger, who died last year at the age of 56. Over time it developed into a wider-ranging consideration of still photography and video art, and the connection – if any – that exists between the two genres.

Breger’s slot in the group show is a rear angle of the lion monument at Tel Hai. The work is called Roaring Lion, and the stone king of the jungle actually appears to be bellowing out over the valley before it.

One of the more intriguing frames is by Servet Kocyigit, a 46-year-old Turkish-born photographer who studied in Amsterdam and divides his time between the two countries. The work is called Motherland and depicts five men, plainly of different ethnic backgrounds and wearing military uniforms of different armies, while a woman dressed in a belly-dancer costume lies horizontally across their supporting hands.

While the woman appears to be perfectly at ease, the men’s expressions leave you with a sense of disquiet. Why Motherland? Does the name posit matriarchal hegemony or is there a suggestion that the male soldiers may be about to challenge that? Kocyigit’s other item in the exhibition is also definitively thought-provoking, featuring a broom head which is clearly made of human hair. The work was first unveiled at the Istanbul Biennale in 2005, and conveyed a feminist message that referenced the daily routine of the homemaker.

Anan Tzuckerman’s Engraver takes us into the realms of the surreal, while Tamar Hirschfeld’s picture of a blond-wigged character – presumably this is a cross-dressing male, complete with whited-up face – posing for a photo in what appears to be an African landscape implies something of a sociopolitical sentiment.

Then there is the Landau video work, Salted Lake, from 2011, which depicts a pair of boots encrusted in salt from our very own Dead Sea, transported to darkest, iciest Poland and gradually sinking through the ice into the sea.

“I made shoes covered in heavy salt crystals by suspending them in the saline waters of the Dead Sea,” Landau explains. “After this, I took them to a frozen lake in the middle of Europe and placed them on the ice. Each shoe melted a big hole in the ice. At night, they finally fell and drowned in the freshwater lake. From the heights of the third strata of the pavilion, they fall and dive downward burdened with history and gravity. I shot the video in Poland, in the revolutionary city of Gdansk, to create a work that touches upon collective memory and pain.”

The concept of a slow, inevitable, grisly end is duly imparted. Landau proffers us something to ponder, as do all the other artists in the lineup. If the exhibition was designed as some kind of tribute to Breger, a constantly fired-up individual who did not generally mince his words, Givon has done a good job.

Photography: Still and Moving Image closes on December 2. For more information: givonartgallery.com