"The Epoch of Space"

Nogah Engler / Noga Shatz / Yehudit Sasportas / Eliezer Sonnenschein / Shai Zurim / Sharon Yaari / Larry Abramson / Orit Hofshi

The exhibition discuss the issue of distance in regard to the concept of "the sublime." In Romanticism, the experience of the sublime was described as emerging in response to nature and its mysterious powers, which threaten the wholeness and independence of the subject. The status of "the sublime" has been undermined by the conquest and commercialization of nature in the modern age, and by its incorporation in global consumerism in the postmodern age. The network of computers and mass communication is now taking the place of nature or "the other." The subject confronting this network feels both fascination and menace.

ith this in mind, the current discussion of the issue of "here" versus "there" takes us to a remote geography of exotic, dark spaces. Postmodern painting marks a return to "sublime" themes and formats, yet imbues them with a sense of horror. Nature is seen more as an object of estranged nostalgia for something lost, that as an object of a desire to conquer and explore. The painter of the "new sublime" does not venture out into the wild; rather, he stays in the studio, painting a concept of conventional nature, a nature that is "social" and of the conscious mind.

Advanced reproduction technologies have radically changed the distinction between object and subject, near and far, seen and unseen, existing and non-existent. The distance between observer and observed, between nature and man, grows ever closer. This is a super-space consisting of a compressed, depth-less void, in which nothing is left of the distance which once enabled the perception of perspective and volume.

Changing Perspectives

The present cluster of exhibitions seeks to view the issue of the relation to "place" in Israeli art. What is the effect of the presence of the artist here in Israel or his absence from it, on the representation of the "Israeli place", of the "here and now? The artistic oeuvre presented in the exhibitions express the tension between an artistic practice that is activist and socio-politically oriented, and one that seeks the realms of dream and fantasy. It seems that the further away an artist is from the pit of the volcano, the more it sparks his interest, and the closer he is, the more urgent is his need to escape.