The Other Side of Drawing

C’est toujours les autres qui meurent… (it is always other people who die)- so writes Marcel Duchamp on his tombstone in Rouen. Is this simply just the last witticism, from an array of witty sayings of this 20th century artist? Years later, in a television interview, Yeshayahu Leibowitz would say things of a similar nature, but not necessarily to amuse: death, he would argue, cannot be placed on the continuum of human experience which transpires on the timeline of our existence. Consequently, a reality which is called death does not exist, there is only lack of life. Kant, so it seems, also shared this way of thinking. Two hundred years prior, in his lecture on anthropology, he related to the linguistic aspect of these insights. According to Kant, since no one can experience his or her death, the thought “I no longer exist” cannot exist; nothing can be thought if I don’t exist. He thus claims it would be a contradiction to assume a subject that negates his or her existence while speaking in the first person.

The English word scalper sounds similar to the word sculptor. Among the archaic actions done to the human head, like turning the skull into a vessel or the use of it for the performance of various rituals, the action of scalping is the only action which does not necessarily kill. It is an action performed on the other side of the head, not the face which is so identified with the human presence. The action of scalping like turning the entire body into a vessel, removes the cover of this organ enabling a chilling look into the interior of a living head.

In an article that  he wrote at the beginning of his specialized training in neurology at a Viennese hospital, Sigmund Freud describes how in lab conditions one can see the nervous system in the brain completely and concretely by dipping tissues from the grey matter into a certain solution. Later, on the way towards the formulation of psychoanalysis, in attempts to trace conceptual imprints in the psychological system, Freud abandons this concrete way of thinking in favor of thought which has no chemical reaction, and examines the ways of imprinting the conceptual in the human consciousness in a completely different way. Thus, while at the outset Freud was interested in physical manifestations of the nervous system, he will later go in a different direction that in essence does not deal with physical recordings that can be observed in lab conditions but rather the imprints of the activities in the psychological system. He shows how external understanding of the system penetrates internally through sensory perception.

Some of these perceptions will not leave a trace in the system but some will leave imprints, like traces slit onto a wondrous writing pad. These are unconscious imprints, traces of unconscious memory that don’t have anything in common with conscious memory. Freud shows how, despite the fact that they were seemingly erased, the traces in these wondrous writing pads can be seen if observed from a certain angle and with proper lighting. In a similar way, something from the traces of unconscious memory can be established through the speech of a subject during analysis or through formations of the unconscious. In other words, things imprinted in the psychological system are not available for direct observation but will appear in coded manners. The way to interpret these formations, for example, a dream or a joke, will be through unraveling the handicraft of the joke or the dream in order to get to its roots, to observe it from the other side.

Monotype printing is a strange kind of printing: you spread paint on a hard plate, like glass, for example. You then attach a sheet of paper to it and draw on its reverse side. The resulting print is of course a mirror image of the original engraved drawing. This is different than the common printing technique whose goal is to duplicate and distribute, here the print is unique and cannot be reconstructed. Besides the unique quality which characterizes the monotype, it has another advantage: the slits which were engraved may appear on additional prints  created from the same plate, thus the plate preserves something  from everything that is imprinted on it.

Casting is a three dimensional equivalent of printing. Here too, the outcome, in this case the sculpture, is an inversion of the mold which produces it. But in this present exhibition, the mold doesn’t just produce the shape of the mass which congeals inside of it; wood cuts, which are on the interior sides of the mold,  are saturated with ink and imprint figures on the surface of the sculpture, figures that are engraved on the plaster while it is still in liquid form and appear on the surface of the final outcome.

“The human language constitutes a kind of communication in which the sender receives his or her message back from the recipient in an inverse form.” Thus, argued one of the participants in one of Lacan’s seminars. Lacan warmly adopted this claim and repeated it several times in his writing. The claim refers to the way the truth of a subject arises from speech in analysis, but in a different way than the things that were thought to have been said. The unconscious, said Lacan, in one of his famous sayings, is understood like language. It can be found on the surface at all times but it is coded, and analytic knowledge allows us to listen to the words which arise from a subject’s speech, despite his or her intention to say something completely different. A subject who is split between ego and the unconscious is the one who is present in the gap between what is said and what he or she thinks has been said. An awareness of this gap enables us to understand speech which is seemingly not possible: for example, I am a speaker who speaks of the absence of existence. While a negation like this creates for Kant a contradiction which cannot be, Lacan shows how this negation presents exactly the opposite, the appearance of the subject of the unconscious in language.

The word “hayot” in Hebrew is ambiguous: it is both the word for animals and also the present tense of the word to live in its feminine, plural conjugation. Both meanings exist simultaneously;  women who live are animals, or are situated on the boundary between human existence and some other existence. It is interesting to note that the letters which form the English word-HAYOT, are not influenced at all by their mirror image, so this word has no other unreadable side. Now a new meaning can be added to the word when it reverts back to Hebrew as heyot and thus assumes the meaning- being.

Efrat Biberman, June 2015

In the exhibition: Tree incubator (Live statue), drawings, video work, and tattoo machine drawings on silicon.

Following the opening night of her exhibition Shahar Yahalom will leave for New-York, for MFA studies at Columbia University. Yahalom is the winner of the Young Artist Award of the ministry of Culture and Sports for 2012. Among other venues she has exhibited: final nominees for the Gottesdiener award exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum at 2011. On 2009 she exhibited at the Herzliya Biennial and Art TLV.Biennial.

“…Following past exemplary shows in which Shahar Yahalom masterfully created objects and installations that corresponded with the contemporary art discourse, in her present exhibition she examines the borders of the high road of the art discourse in which she conducted herself so naturally. The exhibition ED raises the possibility of the turn towards perversion. This possibility is found in canonic aesthetic doctrines that see in the artist one to whom the law, the example or school do not constitute a barrier, but rather a leverage.

… Beyond the description of the artist’s action of drawing, the word “drawing” in Hebrew applies to different forms of drawing, such as literary notes, supply lists, or any other type of list in which something is written, jotted down, leaving a mark. In Hebrew the name of Shahar Yahalom’s current exhibition ED encapsulates within it at least two meanings of “Drawing”. On the one hand it is vapor, which is at once visible yet will soon dissipate. Similarly to the random scribbling of the grocery list that will soon be forgotten after it will be replaced with the groceries themselves. Yet it also keeps the meaning as a witness that will remember and remind of the occurrences.”

-Taken from the ED exhibition text “Five Remarks on Drawing” by Efrat Biberman.

A conversation between Nechami Gotlib and Shahar Yahalom

Question: What brought you to create an incubator for a tree?

Answer: The incubator originated as a thought of an object, a collage of ready-made objects. One of the images used as a source for the work is a photograph of the first space shuttle to land on the moon, Apollo 11. The space shuttlecraft seemed to me as a collection of junk pieces, and it wasn’t clear how such a thing managed to reach the moon. The fantasy that guided me was taking a Sycamore tree, whose origin is in North America, there is a difference in its behavior in Israel and at its natural habitat abroad, so I wanted to build it a space or “space craft” – a space constructed from many elements. The tree is physically too weak to sustain the fantasy, the incubator suffocates it rather then allowing it to live. There is use of every bit of air in the space, there is no one consolidation point. Near the tree sculpture/ incubator there is a Styrofoam sculpture that creates a sort of glacier and snow or ice flakes. Above the tree, there is a lamp that is a source of energy.

Question: The use of “ready made” in your works is new. In the previous works there was always a wish to “invent” something.

Answer: That’s right, in this exhibition there isn’t an expression of freedom in the sculptural work. In this case I didn’t want to invent, but rather to combine things, create objects that are not sculpted.

Question:  Why not sculpt?

Answer: In my previous works, and especially in the work “Raspberry Land” that was exhibited in the Tel Aviv Museum, the sculpting was very physical, erupting, grand and full of passion, abounding in creation, not taking into consideration anything besides itself. This exhibition is the complete opposite; it brings out a will to think from the other side of the ball. It’s a struggle not to sculpt. There is use of living and breathing material as the tree and the air that creates the interactions on its own – A living sculpture.

Question: And the video work “Window Over Dead Body”?

Answer: The video is a window, a diversion, the escape of a glance. This was taken in a dissection room (the room in which autopsies by medical students take place), the gaze of the living upon the dead. The gaze is constantly attracted to the light sources, the window, the light, the outdoors. The gaze is diverted to the conditions rather then the object.

Question: The work “Map” is a drawing done by using a tattoo machine on silicon surface, what brought you to this type of work?

Answer: The drawing is impressed upon the material, penetrates it, enters through it. It does not exist merely upon the surface.