shows

// "as if abundance had never passed from the world" /high tough gallery /hertzelia pituah /group exhibition /jan 05

The presenting artists alongside Adam Sher: Naama Aharonson, Alisa Olmert, Yael Oren, Lee Orlev, Tal Amitai, Hila Ben Ari, Edva Drori, Yoram Vidal, Noga Yudkovich, Raanan Harlap, Dorit Yaacobi, Michal Kav, Reuven Kuperman, Alice Kling, Neta Adan-Dor.
The exhibition relates to the fields of food and nutrition and what could be more natural than to display it at "High Touch", a space that holds prestigious kitchen designs. Amid the participating artists, we found photographs, drawings, embroidery, three-dimensional and video installations, which take part in the local social dialogue while taking on the food path, its representation and marketing.

It seems as if the artists' widening involvement in unconventional materials such as Eggs…Chocolate...Meat...Sugar, flour and wheat in itself indicates an incomparable field so primary and essential to the existence of the living and the human. The use of raw materials themselves, at times to demonstrate their sensuality and their saturation of emotional capacities, and at times actually leading to disintegration, fermentation, and decay, have created a sense of the artists directly transferring the experience of creation, blurring boundaries, opening up to new worlds, fragile and temporary.
There is nothing like the preoccupation with food, attaining it and handling it, to indicate the lives, lifestyles and cultures of those occupied with it. As we have seen lately, there is not a newspaper, whether it deals with life styles, economy et cetera, which does not leave room for recipes, meals, entertaining methods and recommended restaurants. And these bare no resemblance to the previous reports we were used to in the past. Now, there is no longer an interesting recipe from grandmother's drawer or the neighbor. Nowadays, there is a chef with an impressive resume, a concept, and a new and surprising recipe from a desired region in Europe. The descriptions and offers are becoming sophisticated, and without noticing, they dictate the understanding of what "gourmet" is in our regions and generation. Many Television shows display a spectacle of abundance, creativity and hedonism in the food field – a life style. All of them attempt to fulfill a fantasy for the audience that is supposedly the 'normal' way of life.

However, there is a sneaking suspicion that the almost obsessive preoccupation of the audience in general, and of the artists in particular, with food and nutrition, are not merely a natural inclination to deal with the closest, most vital life components, but rather it is one of many aspects that allows us to build the invisible bubble in which there is no room for wars, natural disasters, poverty et cetera, and snuggle into silence. No outcry.