The paintings composing “Pending View” reveal a floating world, which, alongside the ephemeral installation, might gain an apocalyptic air. However, through the destabilization of the existing order, a new state emerges, one in which construction and destruction, or extinction and continuity, exist side by side. The figures seem to possess a twofold relationship with their fluid environment.

The installation stresses the paintings’ unified continuity. They hang from the ceiling, while creating an inner, circular structure in the middle of the gallery – a makeshift construction into which the viewer is welcomed to enter. There, surrounded by the large canvases, the viewer might find what he wished for – a balance, a focal point. This constellation is reminiscent of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological definition of the horizon. Husserl distinguishes between an “internal horizon” and an “external horizon”. The first includes the visible aspects of a given object – in this case, the inner sides of the canvases – the carriers of the image. The latter refers to the invisible aspects of the object – the outer sides of the canvases.

Through this installation, a shared horizon is formed: a mountain, a rope and a water body join together into a new panoramic landscape. Thus, the exhibition as a whole is an experiment in horizontality – the horizon might be missing in the works themselves, but is formed from their joint presentation. For the viewer, it is a paradoxical horizon – a round horizon, encircling him all around

A freedom, which is both terrifying and liberating, is the one taken by Maiberg in this series. The horizon allows fluidity and flexibility not just in terms of color and matter, but as a possible subjective movement in space. In this manner, the viewer, like the figures, finds himself hanging between above and below, here and there, past and future. The unreachable circular horizon allows a new and different linear perspective – a time pending

view.

Keren Goldberg, from “free fall ” the exhibition catalogue

At first, the paintings seem abstract – wide shots of diffuse, saturated, or dilutedstains –like an aerial view, satellite images, or perhaps a map that offers an abstract representation of the terrain. At second glance, the abstract space comes into focus and becomes clearer. The eye skips from site to site and starts recognizing figurative images: snowy ridges, steep slopes, serpentine creeks, or possibly tangles of thin capillaries and open cuts of bleeding paint. A more careful look reveals small figures and other concrete images scattered in the torn landscape –figures in action, events that offer a foothold of sorts.

The work process is completely bare and exposed. Washing, squeezing, cutting, pasting, brushwork, drawing. But despite its unplanned nature, it also seems considerably controlled. Further treatment instills meaning in the accidental. Random stains, cracks in the paint, a faded wash – all these serve as the starting point for deliberate interventions. Pieces of canvas cut from one painting are pasted onto another, but also reworked and integrated into the space, elevating it like a topographic map. From a different perspective, these supposed ridges, these strips of canvas, these patches look like bandages meant to heal the wounded, bleeding surface; to mend the blemishes inflicted on the landscape. And in-between there are pauses. Empty, quiet, seemingly “undone” areas, territories formed by their own concealment.

Wandering past the works may generate a sense of disorientation, in the absence of anchoring elements to hold on to. One’s ability to be in uncertainties, mystery, and doubts is a “negative capability,” wrote the Romantic English poet John Keats in one of his most quoted letters. How can a negative be considered a capacity? Keats understood that any good artwork feeds on these “adverse” ingredients. Where there is no silence there is no sound.