Motti Mizrachi, Miki Karzman and Boaz Arad, Guy Raz
The exhibition discuses the way the political/social/communicational agenda reflects in the works of three social oriented artists, and questioning the gap between reality and its representation through the media imagery. Mifkad is a state of absence and appearance at the same time. The Hebrew word contains different meanings: quorum, counting, criticism, stabilization, ritual, parade, order, absence and appearance.
The exhibition discuses the paradox of reviling-hiding, of directing reality to a virtual structure who provide information that supposedly showing everything, when in fact there is a control mechanism that hides everything and cuts off from the ability to experience.
Motti Mizrachi, one of the leading artists in Israel, exhibits the work “CNN Light” which consists of illuminated Perspex circles, making up the word ‘Light’ in Braille on a wall. Greenish scenes from “Desert Fox” – the 1991 Gulf War between Iraq and the Western allies (which is very similar to the images from the last war in Iraq) – are glued onto the circles. The work focuses on the electronic media, headed by the CNN, a state onto itself – a superpower. The television and the Internet have blurred the difference between a video game and a war. Mizrachi chose to display the work illuminated by a hidden light, using the word that connotes light, but is unseen, because it is written in Braille. What happened in the war is supposedly known, and was supposedly shown to the public, but the public saw only the flickering light. The war is therefore indecipherable, like Braille who is concealed and incomprehensible. Braille is understood and legible by those who do not see light, who uses the sense of touch.
Miki Karzman and Boaz Arad, involved and updated field and video photographers, exhibits the work “Untitled”, a 40 minuets documentary video film taken in the Erez Barrier, on April 2003 at 5 p.m.
The work raises the quotation of the identity and visibility of the photographed people – an absent-present population in Israeli reality.
Guy Raz, a political social artist and one of the leading and exciting artist of the younger generation, exhibits the work “Diskit 4 Catacomb 1” (1994-2003), that deals with the memory and oblivion of the dead Israeli soldier, the absent soldier. The one who left for the battle and never came back and what is left from him is a last photo is a metaphor of commemorating and forgetfulness of any soldier.
Printed on the gallery walls are 450 head images of one soldier without eyes, so there is no dialog or connection with him. The manual imprint of the zirox photos analogous to the private memory of every relative who remembers differently the silhouette of the dead/absent soldier and so the heads became collective memory.
In another part of the gallery, 324 head images of another soldier taped to an additional wall, which crates a state of “imprisonment” of the head between the paper and the wall who prevents completely any real dialog with the viewer.
Along side, in a secluded area, 2 army personal badges (diskit) are placed in boxes with the imprint of the soldiers’ eyes, which replace the official name and number imprint.
