NIGHT VISION IN ROOM 309 | IRIT TAMARI
ONE APRIL MORNING | ELINOR MILCHAN
3.6.-1.4/2021
Irit Tamari presents Night Vision in Room 309 Is a story of a dream that got stuck in a hotel room with no possibility to get out.
Every guest in that room dreams the dream and departs leaving the dream for the next guest.
The exhibition is spread up and down a staircase of an eclectic building which performs as a small hotel.
When Tamari first visited the space, she remembered the story which she once meant to put to writing but never did.
The story was never written and might never will be, but this powerful memory of it was an opening to a stream of thoughts about the
kind of dream, what would it hold, how would it affect the dreamer and what kind of a room holds such a dream…
In her work process Tamari refers to the site as raw material. She invites the visitor in, to go up and down the staircase, to enter the flashes of dream as if through chapters of the unwritten story that eventually finds itself where it occurs.
Tamari photographs and uses her printed photographs as material by cutting it up and reconstructing it. The viewer is physically present in the location yet at the same time views its changes, via the treated images of the place and the artistic intervention in it. Collage, papercuts, and folds creating a new image that enables new and different possibilities to it.
The exhibition is positioned in a spacious manner which is different from earlier exhibition settings by the artist. This curatorial positioning shines a light onto moments and scenes which have been framed in boxes given to the viewer as a sort of an intermission between them.
A threshold of thought, about the moment or alternatively a way out before “re-entering” the scene. The dream’s story reveals, and tries to catch its defining moment, its turning point.
The viewer almost gets “thrown” into a loaded, occasionally troublesome or humoristic moments, experiencing the dream’s “sensation”
of being stuck, only finding release in those who dream it.
Its location, imagined the same as the dream itself. Room #309 is imaginary, it spreads across the staircase, finding its essence in all the images combined in it.
Elinor Milchan ǀ One April Morning… ǀ Site Specific Installation
Inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story “On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning”,
Milchan’s site-specific photographic installation at Assemblage Temporary Project Space engages the passerby to explore this fragile moment of a possible encounter, of blurred lines between dream and reality, between the dreams and the lies we tell ourselves and to others; the discrepancy between what is real and what we project; what we want real and what we try to hide; what we place in front,
and what is behind. In an age of social media, social distancing, and social lies, where people place themselves in fake situation, or fake situation that they do so want to believe are real, that they believe these are real, the distance between the different realities and dreams are blurred, divergent, and apart.
Milchan entangles the viewer’s point of view in a room of broken pieces and entangled paths of chance.
The viewer finds himself confronted with the stare of a large scale colored self-portrait photograph printed on a glossy multi panel stainless steel work, with a three dimensional cubist approach. At a specific point, one can compose a portrait hanging between bars, reminiscent of the mikado, a game of hazard and chance, that hold the work together, though it seems about to break into pieces. The installation allows the reflective surface to be seen in parts and the viewer to metaphorically become part of the work, and eventually its main subject matter, as if this story is his own, embracing at once infinitely sub-divisible paths.
The artwork is also affected by the outside world and time of day, as the natural light and all the surrounding and passerby all become part of the composition of the work, constantly affect its composition.
In the age of social media and social distancing, the idea of narcissism and loneliness, the search for connecting and being seen is ever more relevant.
In this endeavor, the artist takes over an intimate space, located in the back garden of Assemblage boutique hotel & cafe, creating her own moment when emotions connect and mend. The isolation within this intimate space, creates a unique opportunity for the viewer to place himself in a contemplative place where inner and outer connect. The scale of the photograph, integrated with elements of chance, with the use of a black bars, referring to the Mikado game, engulfs and suffocates the visitor in the excess of trapped emotions ready to be released. The installation is accompanied by voice over passages from the story in Japanese, English, and Hebrew.
