Group Exhibition | Penal Colony

29.2.2008 – 27.4.2008
Curator: Ory Dessau

The Exhibition ‘Penal Colony’ deals with the idea of sculpture as performance, both potential and actual. the works in the exhibition, either objects or structures, will be characterized according to concepts of fixtures, instruments, apparatus ,machines, constructions, set-ups or traps. the exhibition will raise questions about the shift from object to environment, viewing participation and the idea of experience, about self-location, territorialization and de-territorialization. Those questions will be examined in relation to private and public strategies for achieving a control over a certain zone or property.

We know that in Israel the idea of codifiyng a space through objects or structure, the act of territorialization, is charged and experienced differently than in Europe, and the show will offer ways for experiencing different codifications that define space, activate it in a certain way.

Each work in the show will present a "demand" towards to space it is located. Each demand will be realized through the integration of the viewer, or through the emphasis of his/her exclusion from the event of the work. The works will organize environments, both active and abandoned, that contain parameters of set-ups, and therefore, of performances. Those performances will create repeating exercises and one-time executions. In accordance to that, the presence of the viewer will be determined both as the condition for the activation of the work (authorized presence) or its destruction (un-authorized presence).