“Blinking” is an additional part of the “Rwanda – Casanova” ongoing and universal project, which deals with political, cultural, spiritual and philosophical issues and reflects the artist’s criticism of the cynical western powers. The project “Rwanda – Casanova” began in 1997 and was exhibited at the Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (1997), the Haifa Art Museum, Israel (2000), the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna (2001), the Braunstein / Quay Gallery, San Francisco (2001), and the Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona (2002), Helena Rubinstein Pavilion For Contemporary Art, Israel (2003).
The new project “Blinking”, contains 1,500 photographs that were taken from Ha’aretz newspaper – from the beginning of the Intifada (September 2000) until the terror attack in Manhattan (September 2001). The images were processed by computer and printed on 39 panels 115X80 cm. each, which are constructed into 13 triptychs 115X240 cm. each triptych represents one month.
“The work was conceived from photographs of the Intifada, which reminded me of romantic paintings,” says Mizrachi. “Black smoke, barrels flying in the air, fire. Exhilarating photographs that are impossible to differentiate from one another.” Motti Mizrachi refers to the over-information that leads to obscuring, distraction and suppression. “The information given to the public through the various channels of the media acts like a screen. In fact, people don’t know what is hidden behind it, and there is no ability to arrive at independent judgment. It creates a situation of apathy.”
Mizrachi emphasizes the absurd by transforming pain and bereavement into a long and colorful and hypnotic photograph that does not reveal the harsh contents of the original. There is no trace of the harsh scenes of victims, demonstrations, terror attacks or advertisements; there is no hierarchy, and everything is seen as stripes of color and movement.
The work discusses the capability or the incapability of the human conscious to receive and process innumerable information, that is aggressively transformed through the different media (press, television, internet and so on) and spread through many fields such as news, publicity, gossip, articles, caricatures, culture and more.
The work reveals the paradox of directing reality to a virtual structure, which provides information that supposedly shows everything, when in fact there is a control mechanism that hides everything and cuts off the ability to experience.
Newspapers provide a shortcut for the expression of opinions, for raising questions. Its incorporation in an artwork extends its life and underscores the information contained within. The distorted images lay compressed and stretched one on top of the other, and create a sort of archeological coruscation of time and information. There is no hierarchy of information. The brute reality is transformed into a sort of abstract work that resembles colorful quasi-wallpaper, or ethnical carpets, or a scene one might see, passing by at high speed, from a window. The distortion of perspective relates to the distortion of information by the media and to the observer’s distortion of perspective that is being flooded by the flickering and blurred information, which lives him in a state of blinking.
