The exhibit consists of video works and drawing sketches, where the video pieces are presented as sculptural objects and they, along with the sound emerging from them, create the space within which they are set. Drawn with pencil on black gouache, the landscape piece was created from the artist's imagination inspired by two sources: the first being silver kitsch-style pictures depicting ideal places, usually fantasized locations inexistent in reality, and the second source of inspiration were Eretz Israel landscape photographs. The light projected on the drawing accompanied by the sound of a passing-by vehicle exposes the landscape itself and the spectrum of coloring variations within the monochromatic drawing. The round hole projected on the wall was photographed on an afternoon in a public garden in Tel Aviv - it remains unedited. The fountain, an abandoned table on which plastic cups and plates are left unattained yet the water continues to flow as a living and vibrant unit, unresolved. All of these elements in the gallery space, along with the sketches hung dispersedly on the walls, together create fragments of the same place, a physical or mental walking distance from each other, liquid and subjective; one passes from kitsch to disaster, from beginning to a deserted plateau. Talia Keinan (b. 1978), is currently a student in the Bezalel M.F.A program in Tel Aviv. An honors graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts and Design in 2003, she also participated in the student exchange program in New York at S.V.A. In 2003 she had a solo exhibit in the Herzeliya Museum of Art and is winner of the Givon Prize for 2004. This is the first exposure of her works held at Noga Gallery.

Project Room

Meirav Heiman - The Villa (Part I)

Up the flight of stairs in the gallery, the sound can already be heard. The dragging of furniture from one place to another. Harsh screeching sounds produce a sense of transition, as if someone is moving an apartment or vacating the flat upstairs. The room is small (4 x 4), the sound is intensely present. On the floor is a video projection which shows a viewpoint from above, of two people dressed in work overalls situated inside a living room. The two (man and woman) are busy moving something from place to place. They are performing a physical activity, which turns into a choreography of the moving of objects; an absurd, restless action, a never-ending one.

This video installation serves as a promo for an extensive project which researches the emotional recesses of the house, its many objects and inhabitants, its unique architecture and its place in our public, political and personal lives. House and location have been perpetual and acute topics in man's life, especially the Jewish man, lacking a comprehensive historical home. Themes such as uprooting, transition, belonging verses lack of belonging - to a home and a place have constantly been omnipresent issues, and in the present political situation these topics have doubled their relevance.

In this work, the reference to 'home' expresses an utter feeling of dis-quietness and dis-orientation - urban disorder, excess, violence. Perhaps an attempt to find what lies beneath the bourgeois-capitalist facon in which we live. A bourgeoisie attitude, disregarding of its immediate surrounding, self-indulged in a perpetual self-presentation which lies on the surface. The treatment here is at once local and universal. Part of the discourse of the materialistic house and its many objects, relates to a paradox confronting the classical Jewish myth of the wanderer - anxious and in constant transition from one place to another, lacking a comprehensive national identity - with today's Israeli hedonism, materialism and at times conceiting patriotism.

The formatted camera allows voyeurism. This is an era of reality TV shows which intrude into people's personal lives, and are brought to us, to our living rooms. Programmes such as "The Villa", in which the house is portrayed as a provincial war zone are wreathed with rating. This loss of intimacy in the home signifies the shattering of one of the last personal strongholds of the man as a private entity and his converting to a consumerist product. In this work the camera's location on the ceiling acts as a peeping camera in a store, "stealing" a description of a bizarre activity.

The notion of consumerism and a human dis-quietness obtains a clinical, minimalist and sisyphic dimension. This work brings to mind pertinent questions on the emotional significance of our belongings, the reasons that cause us to move in space, or to run around products like a never ending ghost dance, like laboratory mice in a cage.