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Maya Muchawsky Parnas, Liberated Self Figurehead (detail), 2010, mixed media.
Critics' Pick: "Correspondences" at Yaffo 23, Jerusalem in Artforum, by Miguel Amado
Maya Muchawsky Parnas, Liberated Self Figurehead (detail), 2010, mixed media.
“Correspondences”
YAFFO 23
23 Yaffo Street
October 26–December 17
“Correspondences,” this venue’s inaugural exhibition, brings together twenty artists, half from Jerusalem and the rest from various parts of the globe, who were paired in order to collaborate on a project inspired by the experiences of their everyday lives. The show intelligently responds to the gallery’s site, a former post office building in the city’s downtown area, and it smartly references the kinds of personal conversations unique to the history of mail art. Following a set of rules provided by the foreign artists, the local artists created the works on view, which departed from the original instructions via an active exchange of ideas and methods. For example, Bogotá-based Pablo Fernandez Zapata directed Maya Muchawsky Parnas to use clay sourced in Jerusalem and model a human head that could be suspended from the ceiling and hang above two activated hot-air pistols. The resultant piece, Liberated Self Figurehead (all works cited, 2010), portrays the face of Muchawsky Parnas herself, which positions the work in the realm of personal psychology, beyond the initial allegorical impulse.
The translation of text into form is highly effective in Yaarah Cohen and Efrat Vonsover’s Variations of Trio A. During the opening of the show, they performed Yvonne Rainer’s seminal 1966 Trio A at the request of Los Angeles–based artist Lindsay Lawson. Without previous knowledge of the choreography, they imitated the movements of the piece in front of documentary footage that was projected onto a wall, reenacting the original work in a play of gestures and shadows. This performative, emotional dimension is further explored in Private Space, a film directed by Leigh Orpaz according to parameters set by Montreal-based Andrew de Freitas. While de Freitas imagined an awkward conversation between a boy and a girl on a first date at a coffee shop, Orpaz used only ambient sound in this scene, allowing the actors’ body language to emerge as the sole means of communication. Although the curatorial framework of “Correspondences” is rooted in conceptualism, it is the dialogues established between the artists that stand out here, which involves the exhibition in the problematics of Jerusalem’s present state as a zone of conflict. In this sense, what resonates the most in the selected works is the articulation of a common message by distinct voices, a metaphor of the city’s important historically multicultural status. -Miguel Amado.
Please visit artforum.com for the review.
YAFFO 23
23 Yaffo Street
October 26–December 17
“Correspondences,” this venue’s inaugural exhibition, brings together twenty artists, half from Jerusalem and the rest from various parts of the globe, who were paired in order to collaborate on a project inspired by the experiences of their everyday lives. The show intelligently responds to the gallery’s site, a former post office building in the city’s downtown area, and it smartly references the kinds of personal conversations unique to the history of mail art. Following a set of rules provided by the foreign artists, the local artists created the works on view, which departed from the original instructions via an active exchange of ideas and methods. For example, Bogotá-based Pablo Fernandez Zapata directed Maya Muchawsky Parnas to use clay sourced in Jerusalem and model a human head that could be suspended from the ceiling and hang above two activated hot-air pistols. The resultant piece, Liberated Self Figurehead (all works cited, 2010), portrays the face of Muchawsky Parnas herself, which positions the work in the realm of personal psychology, beyond the initial allegorical impulse.
The translation of text into form is highly effective in Yaarah Cohen and Efrat Vonsover’s Variations of Trio A. During the opening of the show, they performed Yvonne Rainer’s seminal 1966 Trio A at the request of Los Angeles–based artist Lindsay Lawson. Without previous knowledge of the choreography, they imitated the movements of the piece in front of documentary footage that was projected onto a wall, reenacting the original work in a play of gestures and shadows. This performative, emotional dimension is further explored in Private Space, a film directed by Leigh Orpaz according to parameters set by Montreal-based Andrew de Freitas. While de Freitas imagined an awkward conversation between a boy and a girl on a first date at a coffee shop, Orpaz used only ambient sound in this scene, allowing the actors’ body language to emerge as the sole means of communication. Although the curatorial framework of “Correspondences” is rooted in conceptualism, it is the dialogues established between the artists that stand out here, which involves the exhibition in the problematics of Jerusalem’s present state as a zone of conflict. In this sense, what resonates the most in the selected works is the articulation of a common message by distinct voices, a metaphor of the city’s important historically multicultural status. -Miguel Amado.
Please visit artforum.com for the review.
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