Michal Shamir | Solo +
06.12.2012 – 19.01.2013
Michal Shamir’s solo exhibition “Solo +” is an installation composed of new works by the artist and additional artworks of artists Nir Evron, Tsibi Geva and Liav Mizrahi, who were invited by Shamir to participate in the exhibition. The installation incorporates wall and floor sculptures with video works and photographs. Part of the installation “trickles” to the other floors, where it is exhibited at the book shop and café ‘Tola’at Sfarim’, as well as the roof floor of the gallery.
At the exhibition, Shamir synthesizes between the external and internal. In this scope, the “foreign” artworks of the different artists stand at the joining points. The outcome is a complex internal space that invites the viewer to explore inside it. Nir Evron’s lamppost can be seen in such way as it appears to shine an artificial beam on Shamir’s crinkled birds. The birds either “fly” around on the gallery’s walls or lie fragile on broken asphalt and pavement; reminiscent of the street it once was.
The artworks of the other artists are assimilated into the installation as an organic implantation. These “foreign substances” simulate relations of rejection and acceptance as an implant in the living body. The work of Liav Mizrahi is a laborious sooty drawing. The physical element is evident in the work; the toilsome technique is inherent to the artwork. The flame of the candle trembles over the paper and echoes the vibrations of the pumping blood in Shamir’s video work, which stands in front of Mizrahi’s drawing. The strenuous process is reminiscing of the Sisyphean pulses of heartbeat that fade and regain strength.
Tsibi Geva‘s new work, which is placed over a fallen ceiling fan with broken wings, encompasses an erupting ascending movement that intensely formed into a storm of a “mound of things”. “…at times, as with tectonic movements, things that were under are tossed upwards; pushed and break out like hot lava, and disrupt our ability to understand and form them into a thematic or chronological way. These changes occur upon time, are occasionally slow and gradual, and sometimes at the flash of the moment…” The fan is installed by Shamir to the foot of the storm as aftermath. This placement seems to blur the order of events.
Shamir’s video work is composed of four screens which project the words “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral”. The words, drawn from the children’s game, fade and washed away; the temporality maintains the disturbing chain of events in the space.
At the top floor Shamir presents an additional project- “Stones”. The sharp and rich images impart the stones with clear definition as they appear out of the dark. The change in perspective of the viewer allows a broader range of alternative to the mundane.
Michal Shamir was Born in 1957 Tel Aviv, lives and works in Israel. She graduated a BFA from Ha’Midrasha and holds an MFA from The School of Visual Arts, New York. Shamir serves as the director of the Sapir College’s School of Art, Social Studies and Culture, Israel. Shamir has received numerous prizes and awards (among them the Ministry of Education and Culture Prize for an Israeli Artist). Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Israel and abroad, and is represented in important collections.
These days, Michal Shamir’s work is presented at the exhibition “Cabinets of Wonder in Contemporary Art: From Astonishment to Disenchantment”, at the Herzelia Museum (Curators: Dalia Levin, Daria Kaufmann and Ghila Limon). There, she presents a flock of semi-transparent “birds” seemingly flying across one of the exhibition halls.
During the exhibition a performance based dialogue took place in Michal Shamir’s exhibition, by choreographers and performers Noa Dar, Renana Raz and Sahar Azimi, 19.01.2013
