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March 27 to May 3, 2008
Opening reception: March 27, 6 to 9pm
Sergio Edelsztein in conversation with Guy Ben Nir, 7: 30pm
Only Connect
Guy Ben Nir, Miri Segal and Ruti Sella.
curated by Sergio Edelsztein,
Director, Center for Contemporary Art
Tel Aviv.
The three works featured in "Only Connect" are good examples of the thematic concerns addressed by Israeli art in general and Israeli video art in particular in recent years. In many respects, the subject matter of the presented works is one: the search and definition of personal relations, of love, and a consequent need to define and comprehend their context.
Distinctively personal and centered on the artist's presence, the works in the exhibition are typified by a strong performative quality. This holds true even for Miri Segal's BRB ( Be Right Back) , where the main character is not a person per se, but an avatar of the artist, searching and observing others in their quest for meaning in life and for relationships in the virtual world of the popular website Second Life . In Guy Ben-Ner's Stealing Beauty , the artist and his family act in a parody of the relationships within the family nucleus as an economical entity, and of its interactions with the world, demonstrating how the same mercantile relations apply within the family unit as in the world outside. He inculcates his children with an economic doctrine seasoned with more than a pinch of hypocrisy towards wealth and the meaning of private property - stealing even the film's decor. In Nothing Happened , as in all of her works, Ruti Sela likewise functions as both the director and the protagonist. Assuming different wigs and identities, her position behind the camera is nevertheless always clear even when she is acting for it. By exposing herself, Sela prompts others to react and deliver themselves, their wishes, and their fantasies to the camera.
The three works on view take place in different settings, and employ different acting strategies and media language. Ben-Ner appropriates the available settings of the popular IKEA shops as décor. His work is an elaborately scripted and rehearsed parody of a TV sitcom. Segal's BRB (an acronym of "be right back" in chat jargon; a title alluding to the switch between "RL [real life] and SL) takes place nowhere and everywhere, namely - in the World Wide Web. "Filmed" right out of the site, and thus a collective digital work, BRB is the outcome of a quest for orientation in a world governed by "search engines." These tools, however, never hit the user's true target. Instead, the search takes the artist and her assistant (nicknamed Muzza and Roga respectively) into a universe where only a few of the values and principles that rule our world are in force - theirs' is a search for meaning along gambling arcades, virtual art galleries, philosopher's campfires, and public and private sex locations. Sela embarks on a nocturnal journey in the streets of Tel Aviv, engaging in spontaneous encounters with passersby on the street and in her private quarters. She depicts an endless search for love and relationships, documenting hers and her friends' desires as well as those of random strangers.
In their technical and cinematic language, the three works presented in "Only Connect" furnish a panorama of the medium's diversity: from Sela's improvised documentary, through Ben-Ner's staged situations, to Segal's digital world, a corporate creation whose collective nature resembles Sela's Nothing Happened . Despite their technical and medial divergence, these three video pieces encapsulate one existential theme - the search for meaning, identity, and love.
—Sergio Edelsztein
Support for the exhibition was given by the Office of Cultural Affairs, Israeli Consulate.
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