| Fremdkurzreferat | The exhibition "Through the Object" brings together several artists who look at objects. The encounter between photograph and object allows a shared discourse intimately related to the essence of photography as a medium. Two opposite values have been attributed to photography ever since its fledgling stages: on the one hand, the immediate connection to reality makes photography the repository of truth, even if partial or distorted. That is, the photograph is perceived as an image that represents an objective exterior reality. On the other hand, it is frequently claimed that the photograph "says nothing" and, as such, refers to itself alone.
In his catalogue article Dr. Yiftah Goldman addresses the transformations of the industrial object from its modern version marked by human traces to the self-sufficient object of postmodernism. He points to the essential difference between these positions--modernism seeks to change reality, whereas postmodernism merely describes it: "The depth of modernism stems from its acknowledgment of several essential gaps. For example, the gap between object and subject, between essence and phenomenon, between authenticity and alienation. Concomitantly with the acknowledgment of these gaps, modernism demanded their erasure ... That is, these gaps were perceived as a problem, as something to be amended ... Postmodernism denies these gaps ... In the absence of depth, postmodern art presents the vast array of phenomena as the surface of an infinite mosaic. The complex relations between phenomena are more than once concealed or denied and even when presented they belong to the surface: connections devoid of hierarchy that defy the contrasting judgments of modernism: essential vs. contingent, essential vs. inessential, original vs. fake, true vs. false." The exhibition moves within these boundaries: objects / photographs imbued with an external meaning, with a trace of cultural discourse whose presence fills the photograph space as an echo; and objects / photographs whose self-sufficient meaning inhabits them.
Some photographs in this exhibition exude the "aura" as the presence of a person or her culture, as a trace, memory, wish or idea woven into the photographed object. This gap between image and concreteness, which underpins the modernism visible in the works of Igael Shemtov, Shosh Kormosh and Ariela Shavid, is anchored in the photographed object, in the referral of the gaze to what is absent from the photograph, in the questions these work raise about the medium.
Postmodern thought has erased the depth dimension, leaving the surface as sole substance. The object, too, is perceived as self-sufficient. Human traces no longer mark it, no longer emerge from it. It is like the photograph, that "very special image," to use Barthes' words, which "gives itself out as complete--integral, we might say, playing on the word." The works of Anan Tzuckerman, David Adika, Yossi Breger, Guy Goldstein and Dalia Gottlieb feature such visual expressions, which do not represent a reality beyond: the photograph's opaqueness equals the object's opaqueness; the object's life equals the photograph's plenitude.
Naama Haikin |
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