The exhibition is dedicated to the loving memory of my parents – Avraham and Malka Lavi – with everlasting appreciation and gratitude
Tal Amitai-Lavi's solo exhibition Light Construction is a site-specific installation created and built especially for the gallery and is a continuum of the artist's exploration of the concept of home.
– To view an abridged version of the exhibition's video catalogue click here –
The exhibition includes three elements that create one whole sculptural environment: a large drawing depicting a house impacted by Hurricane Katrina, drawn with black sewing thread glued on a clear Perspex sheet, and two monumental sculptural works. One of the works, Colonnade, is an installation of two rows of columns echoing the colonnade in the gallery's façade, the other is a slightly opened door, allowing a glance into a dark and empty space.
All the works at the exhibition have been created in a laborious, repetitive and Sisyphean process. The sculptural works are constructed in a unique technique; stretching thousands of clear and thin fishing lines. This sculptural method creates an architectural structure made of unconventional materials as well as a shift between the two dimensional and three dimensional, between presence and absence. The colonnade's usual presence of heavy and solid concrete appropriate for supporting pillars is transformed to an airy structure of illusive fishing lines. The door is spatially deceptive, confusing the inside and outside, actual space with the imagined one, threatening and inviting at the same time.
The exhibition’s name, Light Construction, carries a dual meaning referring both to the airy aspect of the works, paraphrasing the term “light-frame construction”, as well as to the feature of light, an integral sculptural material in this exhibition, which enables our vision to see the works as three dimensional and their illusive optical appearance.
While in her earlier works Amitai-Lavi focused on the relationships within the framework of the home or family, in this exhibition she draws away from those narratives and towards a visual and conceptual materiality. It is a continuous reductive effort which manifests in her choice of image, matter and colour.
***
Acknowledgments:
Eliran Yosef, director of Jet Laser, Holon; Erel Hershko, Yoram (Jores) Ilan, Yotvata locksmith's workshop; Nissan Gelbard – light design; Assistants: Eviatar Toker, Shelly Wasserman, Roi Sharabani and volunteers; supporters through “Headstart”; Nira Itzhaki and Chelouche Gallery team: Adi Artsi and Dafna Falk.
