Roi Kuper / It could have been otherwise

Opening: 18/03/2010   Closing: 23/04/2010

It could have been otherwise, Exhibition view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2010
It could have been otherwise, Exhibition view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2010
It could have been otherwise, Exhibition view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2010
It could have been otherwise, Exhibition view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2010
Untitled, color print, 240x300cm, 2010
Untitled, color print, 240x300cm, 2010
Untitled, color print, 240x300cm, 2010
150x60
Untitled, color print, 30x40 cm, 2010

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