"FLEEING AWAY FROM WHAT BOTHERS YOU MOST"
17 MARCH –17 JUNE 2007

Jumana Emil Abboud
(b. 1971, Palestinian, lives and works in Jerusalem)
"Al Awda/The return", 2002, video loop 4.35 min.
This video work shows a person walking in the woods. As in the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel, she leaves a trail on the ground to find her way back. The work documents a performance and the artist expresses the work's central theme as "the Palestinians' right to return to their homeland". Selected drawings from Jumana Emil Abboud's "The Heart Collection", (2002-2005), a work in progress, are also featured in the exhibition.

David Perlov
(b. 1930 in Rio de Janeiro - d. 2003 in Tel Aviv)
"My Stills, 1952-2002" (2003), color video, 61 min., in English
David Perlov was born 1930 in Brazil and died 2003 in Tel Aviv. When he was in his twenties he studied photography and film in Paris. In 1958, he moved to Israel and embarked on a film career that lasted for half a century. "My Stills 1952-2002" is based on David Perlov's stills. The photos give the impression of snapshots, a flow of people documented in passing. Most of them were taken in Perlov's own neighbourhood, but he also visits his favourite places in Paris and pays tribute to his idols and inspirational figures. Perlov's narrative voiceover is equally captivating whether he is reflecting on the events of 9/11, or the flowers in the security guard's buttonhole. "My Stills" was the last film he made.

Raeda Saadeh
(b. 1977, Um El-Fahem, Palestinian, lives and works in Jerusalem)
"Mona Lisa", 2007, 86 x 63 cm
"The Milk Maid", 2007, 92 x 82 cm
"Diana", 2007, 120 x 90 cm, all color photographs mounted on aluminium
Raeda Saadeh has created photos that refer to paintings made in the 16th to 18th century by Da Vinci, Vermeer and Nattier. "I try to put myself in the place of the portrayed women," says Raeda Saadeh. Using this as her starting point she explores the longing to be someone else and yet being tied down by the actual situation and reality of being a Palestinian and a woman. The settings she chooses emulate the landscapes in the background of the original paintings, and the artist also describes how "the occupied landscape becomes a co-actor" in the enactment.

Gil Marco Shani
(b. 1968 in Tel-Aviv, where he lives and works)
"Untitled", 2007, acrylic and marker on canvas, 203 x 300 cm
"Untitled", 2007, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 203 x 300 cm
"Untitled", 2007, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 156 x 122 cm
"Untitled", 2005-2007, 20 drawings, pencil on paper, various sizes.
Gil Marco Shani's drawings are usually based on photographs. Some of them eventually turn into paintings. He uses the same motifs repeatedly, reworking them or extracting details from them. He says that he depicts everyday scenes and uses symbols of national art such as the camel, but his imagery also includes deer and birds, sexuality, the army and violence.

Jan Tichy
(b. 1974 in Prague, lives and works in Tel Aviv)
Jan Tichy has devoted part of his oeuvre to working with architectural models of veritably mythical places, sites with a history that refers to a context that is greater than the history of the building itself. He collects as much information as possible from the internet and constructs a model based on this information and his own suppositions of what it must look like.
"DIMONA", 2006
paper model, video projection and ink jet printouts, 45 x 50 x 50 cm Dimona is a nuclear research reactor built in Israel around 1958 with aid from France. The facility has been kept secret and has not been subjected to international inspection safeguards. Today, the plant is 40 years old and there is concern that it may be hazardous. "Yasser Arafat International Airport", 2006
paper model, sand 120 x 45 x 15 cm
The Yasser Arafat International Airport is in the southern part of the Gaza strip. It was built in 1996 during the upheaval of the Oslo peace process, and opened to the public in 1998. It was closed in 2000, shortly after the Second Intifada started. The artist describes the airport as a symbol of lapsed potential.

Jean-Luc Vilmouth
(b. 1952 in Creutzwald, lives and works in Paris)
"Café de l'Olivier", 2007
The cafés Jean-Luc Vilmouth creates are based on his walks in various cities. At Magasin 3 he has altered the existing café, recreating "Café de l'Olivier", which he made for Anadiel Gallery in east Jerusalem in 1994. Anadiel Gallery, together with the al-Ma´mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, is the first and largest Palestinian forum for contemporary art. In 1994, the artist wrote: "On a walk in the eastern part of Jerusalem, I found an olive tree. It was to be torn up by its roots." The tree was taken to the gallery and incorporated in the café he created during his exhibition there. Jean-Luc Vilmouth's work with cafés and bars deals with an interest in the relationship between the artist's concept and the visitor.

CONTENTS:
Prologue by David Neuman, director Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Congratulations conversation between the artist and Richard Julin, chief curator Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall

Exhibition catalogue no 36 produced by Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall in three separate editions in Swedish, English and German. Richly illustrated. Hard cover. Published 2007 in collaboration with Lars Müller Publishers

http://www.lars-mueller-publishers.com/

More information available 2007-02-10

For the participants in this show - artists working in a contemporary Postmodernist context - the political interest is inevitable. Given that the artists work (and most of them also live) in the Middle Eastern context, confronting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes the crucial issue. Considering that modernist and contemporary art wished to hover between 'Art and Life,' working within the Middle Eastern context, close to the immediacy and the exigency of its daily events, implies that the political narratives and actual imagery become crucial means for the development of a vital and significant art language. All the artists in the exhibition deal with being affected by the Middle Eastern crisis and the worrying events that constantly haunt its actual reality.

With its uprooted olive tree and the images of surgical devices that surround it, Jean-Luc Vilmouth's installation, for example, refers to the uprooting of olive trees, one of the sanctions that were executed by the Israeli authorities against the occupied Palestinian areas. It is the colors of the Palestinian flag, painted in pale shades, that is marked in Jumana Emil-Abboud's drawings as a ghostly figure - or alternatively as the 'guardian angel' - that possesses her work. The pathway of pieces of pita bread on the forest ground in her video work becomes a reminiscence of someone who strives to trace the residues of one of the Palestinian villages that were demolished in 1948 (residues that so often were quickly concealed by forests planted as a result of Zionist interest).

The memory of these ruined Palestinian habitations is also evoked by the photographs of Raeda Saadeh in which she is mirroring her masqueraded self-portrait in a setting reminding of the ruins of an abandoned Palestinian village. Jan Tichy's paper model follows the plan of the nuclear power plant in Dimona (Israel) and thus the spectator is reminded of the nuclear threat that hovers over the Middle Eastern region. A trail of uncanny connotations follows Gil Marco Shani's paintings, developed during the past five years as part of a gigantic installation entitled "School of Terror". Part of it wishes to realize an oriental legend of horror (invented by Shani) in which a caravan of camels (often symbolizing oriental characters - due to foreign, even colonialist interest in the East) get lost at the arid, limitless and dazzling white dunes of the desert. A series of photographic images tracing tragic moments and lost figures related to nations, communities or histories associated with the population in the Middle East (such as the Jewish holocaust, refugees, victims of 9.11 and the Islamic voice that was heard through this horrific moment) is combined and linked together in the cinematic sequence of "My Stills", David Perlov's last movie.

But isn't it the movie itself, the mere cinematic sequence of Perlov that shifts its images from one political-historical demographic context into another, sweeping them into the rhythm of the cinematic continuum, that deprive its photographic-cinematic images from their immediate political connotation and turns them into figures of a more abstract sentiment of nostalgia and human tragedy?

Perlov's movie can stand as an exquisite example of a principle that is common for most of the works in this show, not accepting their legibility within the limits of a given political discourse. Their commitment to the artistic critical voice within their political situation is always intermingled with a desire to examine the more abstract poetic-emotional imaginary margins of the political narratives that they evoke. In other words, these artworks understand the meaning of their politicization as an expansion of their political connotation into a wider and more transformable frame of references.

Their 'expanded field' of references often includes allusions to items that are pulled out from the global cultural reservoir: they come from Modernist history (David Perlov), from masterpieces of art history (Raeda Saadeh), from an ancient book of spiritual eroticism (Jumana Emil Abboud), from the dark and irrational vocabulary of Romantic Decadent narratives (Gil Marco Shani and Jan Tichy). Some figures in these artworks appear almost as mediums destined to wander and lead between different levels of connotations; in Emil Abboud's and Saadeh's works this meditative persona is embodied in the figure of the woman; in the works of Shani and Vilmouth this 'medium' is presented through the images of 'Nature'; in Perlov's work it is heard through a human voice, Perlov's continuous voice-over in his movie, combining images, stories and histories - with its hypnotic sounds almost invoking the voice of an ancient storyteller that conjures the legends of lost eras.But the transformative state of the artworks in this show will not let itself be used as a device for the aesthetisation of their political narratives. The point of departure of these works is actually split into three. On the one hand the actual immediate political-contextual reality, and on the other hand the imaginary poetic-allusive and metaphoric sphere of a utopian artwork. And between these two worlds there is a gap, an unbridgeable fissure.

The persistent existence of this gap stress out the absurdity of any try to soar from the ground of the political and actual field. Yet it is exactly this gap that functions as the space where 'political statements' can turn into 'political artworks' - because right into this gap the artists could flee, away from their bothering (political) context, then returning back to it, and so on and so forth, in an endless circular move.

Sarit Shapira, March 2007

Sarit Shapira is a leading authority on contemporary art in the Middle East. She lectures in art theory at the Bezalel Art Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, and is a freelance curator at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and other institutions. Sarit Shapira is also an associate curator at Magasin 3. This is her first own exhibition for the institution and a Swedish audience.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Jumana Emil Abboud
"Al Awda/The return", 2002
video, 4,35 mins. loop
"The Heart collection", 2002-2005
work in progress, part of larger work


David Perlov
"My Stills", 1952-2002 (2003)
video, 61 mins.


Raeda Saadeh
"The Milkmaid", 2007
c-print mounted on aluminium
"Diana", 2007
c-print mounted on aluminium
"Mona Lisa", 2007
c-print mounted on aluminium


Gil Marco Shani
Untitled, 2007, acrylic and marker on canvas, 203 x 300 cm
Untitled, 2007, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 203 x 300 cm
Untitled, 2007, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 156 x 122 cm
Untitled, 2005-2007, 20 drawings, pencil on paper, various sizes.


Jan Tichy
"DIMONA", 2006
Paper model and video projection, inkjet prints
"Yasser Arafat International Airport", 2006
Paper model, sand, inkjet print



Jean-Luc Vilmouth
"Café de l'Olivier", 2007
re-made concept originally created for Anadiel Gallery, East-Jerusalem, 1994
Olives, olive tree, wooden tables, chairs, cibachrome

AUDIO GUIDE

duration: 15 mins, in English

© Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, 2007

Download the program and listen to the participating artists talk about their works, their backgrounds and discuss the context in which they work. At Magasin 3 you are also welcome to borrow an audio guide for free and listen to the conversation in the café or in the exhibition.

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