Jan Tichy's unique work is showing at the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv until November 11. Irit Mor tells you why it is not a show to be missed.
Curator: Sergio Edelstein
The exhibition by artist Jan Tichy presents a range of his works in photography, video, sculpture and sound, with his virtuoso treatment of lights and shadows using video projectors. Using these methods, Tichy exposes hidden structures, concealed or disposed elements of culture and political power.
Among Tichy’’s earliest works to be shown in the exhibition will be a work entitled “Bab El Musrara” (2002), a video work reflecting his general interest in architecture, particularly its political significance. Another video work that will be shown is “Recess” (2009) displaying a fixed, top viewpoint overlooking a school playground in Gary, Indiana. In this work, a group of children wearing uniforms – most of them black – are playing. Their activities, scattered throughout the field of vision, repeatedly escalate into violence. In its structure, and even more so in the boundaries that define it, the playground is reminiscent of Tichy’s paper models.
Displayed from among Tichy’s paper models, his trademark form, will be the piece entitle “1391” (2007), a model of a secret facility used to detain political prisoners whose very existence is emphatically denied by Israeli officials.
The exhibition will also include several installations and video pieces that deal with Tichy’s sources of inspiration. His interest in photography is highlighted in “Bats” – a slide installation that the artist photographed blindly out in the Tel Aviv night scene. He succeeds in capturing numerous bats dashing through the nights of the white city with use of his flash.
In another installation included in the exhibition, “Photos” (2006), he photographed seven banal night environments, empowered and awakened by the power of the light wandering through each of them, be it light reflecting in water or light that broke and reflected in dust or smoke.
Maneuvers of light and darkness, with the support of video projectors, are the central means that give Tichy’s works their multi-layered meaning. Light transforms surfaces and structures into a defined arena, a framework that slowly offers us the necessary hints at possible signifiers.
Address: 5 Kalisher St, Tel Aviv
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Opening hours:
Monday – Thursday: 14:00 – 19:00
Friday and Saturday: 10:00 – 14:00
