shows

// happy dead end /artists' house /tel aviv /solo exhibition /oct06 - dec06

"Adam Sher's embalmed images are realistically copied from miniature Disney plastic figurines found in a dump and bought by the pound. The markings of time are apparent in them. They lack gloss, glamour or joy and appear to be scaly, bleeding, facing destruction.
Sher grants new strength to these images. He removes them from their natural habitat and isolates them; taking them out of proportion to a full size enlargement and having them confront the viewer at eye level. In fact, this is a conversion of the real with the signifiers of reality. That is, the images receive autonomic power and the status of functional doubles.

The show presents a series of giant dummies of the mass culture and of childhood memory. While the animated, classic images accompany the western world as nostalgic, educational and naïve icon, Sher breathes new life into them.
The treatment of the images seen in the exhibition is dual. On one hand, they are presented as is, unattended, as a realistic documentation. And on the other hand, they arouse questions about godliness, economics, media, the culture of consumerism, and the gap between childish naïveté and harsh criticism.
Although these images are infantile, and have an added romantic – emotional – sentimental value, they are new media monsters that are disconcerting as they turn into the golem that may come to life and destroy its creator. The images become frightfully realistic due to their technique of enlargement. They are reminiscent of Frankenstein's rise and fall tale (1931). The images are a kind of genetic cloning that may resurrect, and be granted life on its own right in direct correlation to the mass culture and consumerism of our time.

These characters were originally amiable, entertaining cartoons. Over time, they gained the power of a huge industry both financially and emotionally. This mixture seems dangerous for a moment, as if lacking control and taming, reminding one of the android duplicates in the 1982 movie, Blade Runner, who revolt against humans, perhaps as a punishment for the hubris of creating them from the get go.
The characters' gestures may be reminiscent of the traditional compositions found in religious paintings together with conservative puritan icons (in the spirit of American Gothic by Grant Wood, 1930), and reinforce the connection between spiritual, social and 'new' icons of the mass culture and consumerism. As such, it makes one wonder, who the godly creator? What is the new religion? What about the traditional, cultural roles?