In the main space the artist is showing two large scale works, each divided into nine parts. One shows yellow flowers that resemble little bonfires, hovering on a black background. The other shows a bush on rocky soil, at a water source’s ledge. The sunlight eliminates the bush, so it seems to be on fire. The enlargement of the image, which usually entails a loss of sharpness and information, provides the images with a sensual, hypnotic physicality. The lack appears as excess.

The disintegration of the image delays the gaze and brings up the question of selection that is intrinsic to photography, including the choice of what is kept and what is lost. The absolute black and the burnt white seemingly mark the boundaries of visibility; however, here they are part of the image. The image in this case does not exclude the present element (the absent) from the visible, but allows the exploration of the relations between the visible and the absent. The absent appears in the figure of the opaque black and the blinding white, and in this manner penetrates the space of the visible.

If it were possible to observe each part of the image as a separate image, one might have asked about the almost completely black in the work with the yellow flowers. It is hard to see anything, and yet this part is essential, and it is there, laid in front of the viewer, widely opening an infinite space which is subjected equally to viewing and imagination.

The large works are not framed and thus, in the upper part of the work with the flaming bush where shines a bright white light, the boundaries of the image are unraveled. The absence of a frame allows the image to break out of its own ends, to break out from the position of an object into the site in which the observance takes place.

The bush, consumed by the sun’s rays, brings to mind the biblical burning bush. The burning bush is the site where the ultimate unseen (god) appeared in the domain of the visible.

Another work shows a primordial landscape. Blinding light floods the frame’s upper part and the skies mix with the earth. A black spot, the source of which is not clear, penetrates the frame and threatens to undermine the serenity.

In the Project Room the artist is showing 4 works in which yellow butterflies turn into sparks of fire hovering above a green field.

The intervention in the captured image reveals itself to the viewer at first glance. This action claims the attention, denying the source in favor of the image, choosing what is there for what could have been. The overwhelming beauty, the so sought after sublime, is not out there waiting for the photographer’s wandering gaze, but is rather extracted from within the image through an act of alchemistry, springing out of it in a full annihilating eruption. The fire takes hold of the image.

The shining light is repeated through the works, as though allowing the metaphysical to be revealed as concrete, to be seen.

Liat Lavi

Roi Kuper’s new series of color photographs was created over the past year in Switzerland, France, and Israel. A big storm in the Alps, clinging stillness in Provence, a drying lake surrounded by mountains, a vineyard encompassed by fields of thorns, a barren desert, a rock pool, mist swirling around the Alps, and all of it – like synchronized breaths, an echo of loneliness, a local hallucination.

These are complex and charged landscapes that divide into two under the clear, bright sky. This division draws toward the warmth of initial inspiration opposite a landscape pretending to be dead and forms of alertness and strength, of emotional release from the tension. Eternal passion.

The works examine a world that seems to desire nothing, to be involved only with itself, a world shrouded by contradictions where one has to act with total silence, where there is no place for a wish, where there is a state of static hallucination, total silence. The desire is outside the internal labor that, through the knowledge of selective memory, guides the observation to a supposition of the heart and from there to understanding, to the domain of contemplation.

Landscapes of Israeli seacoast, the north Negev and portraits are the images of Roi Kuper’s new works.

In contrast with earlier black & white photographs these are colored photographs.

Charged with Israeli political, social and personal realities, the photographs are a product of a well conscious process.
Occasionally their expression is direct, usually indirect.
Even though personal aspects the works are not restricted to a subjective state of mind.

Rona Sela* in her article for the catalogue “Citrus Necropolis” says: “The subject matters in Kuper’s works are hard, incisive, painful yet their visually is not offensive or garish, but beautiful, pleasant, gentle. Kuper’s gaze is introverted and the calm surface of his works has to be peeled away to reach the heart of the matter.” There is not a crucial modification in Kuper’s manners of acting, though the appearance seems different.

Kuper state that his main interest is the accurate, detailed observation, starting with observing the landscape then holding of the gaze. The continuity of the act transforms itself to a meditative gaze.
“…As a creator I’m looking for new observations, trying to find how to rupture (break) the normative gaze… photography is at first an observation; looking inside and outside at the same time… the product of photography reveals an instant of delay, an external reality but it is also an image of an inner process.

If, in the works from the series Necropolis Kuper referred to the destructive military presence, damaging the landscape of Israel and in the series Citrus he focused on photographing deserted citrus groves that until recently were the absolute symbol of the Zionist dream and national collective ethos, in the current series Kuper focuses his camera on silent, anonymous, isolated landscape.

Only the rustle of ears (of corn) in the wind or the murmur of the sea waves can be heard. Apparently there is nothing worrying in those views.
The power of the image lies in their muteness.
Kuper says,”what is interest for me is a place empty from people that everything can happens there. Places where there can occur expectation for something to happen, where additional (further) meanings of ideas concerning space and way of looking can appear… the gaze arises thoughts and emotions while standing ahead something to come…”**
The works examine the position of one looking towards the horizon, the endless space provides kind of relief, but only for a moment. The photographs attempt to be point for relaxation, meditation and utopia. But like the hero of the “Quay” by Chris Mrker, we realize that there is no refuge from the past.***

The portrait: a woman, her eyes shut down with a serenity expression, her classic feature disconnected from any background. Fragility is hiding under the perfect lifeless mask.

*”Species of Memory”: Notes on the Works of Roi Kuper, 1990-2001, Citrus Necropolis, Hertzliya Museum of Art, 2001.

**From a conversation between Kuper and Effrat Shalem, Studio Magazine, No. 128 pp. 28-34.

*** From a conversation with Roi Kuper.