Yoav watches Ziv, who seems to be speaking both to Yoav and to the space itself
two artists observing one another. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: Yoav follows Ziv with his gaze, while Ziv continues in his own rhythm—working in the open desert landscape, at a remote, unmarked site, without community, without framework, without any expectation of visibility.
This encounter raises a profound question: what is the meaning of art created beyond the range of sight? What drives the urge to place a sculpture—an object, a construction—in space, before the light, the sand, and the sky, without anticipating the viewer’s returning gaze? An action without reaction; an act for its own sake.
Yoav travels with his camera to the distant point where Ziv is working, and photographs him. And if Yoav hadn’t come—would Ziv still have placed his sculptures in the landscape? The answer is likely yes. Ziv is an artist unto himself, one who escaped the boiling center of the art world, distancing himself as far as possible from the crowded heart of Tel Aviv, and merging into the desert void—accompanied by a bird, a cat, a cigarette’s ember, and a wool hat.
There, he performs his actions: a personal form of performance in space, coded by his own reflections and ideas. He installs memento mori in the desert—a skull of iron wire, coated in local mud, like a fossil bearing witness to the death that pervades all things, a transmission from another time.
Ziv is a working, laboring artist. Each morning he rises to fulfill his daily task—another link in his mapping of space: a sculpture that converses with wind, time, and emptiness. His asceticism lies in everything—in his clothing, in his long exposure to the sun, in his hard work and endless persistence.
Yoav—entirely camera, entirely eye—remains unseen. One might say: he is friend, companion, witness, providing his sculptor friend with the minimal gift he doesn’t even think to ask for—the returning gaze, reflection, affection, and mystery.
Text by Tali tamir. translated by Yoav hirsch
PERMANENT ISLAND an inter-disciplinary installation by Yoav Hirsch offers a total sensual experience. This work is gathering medium edges from movement, performance and drawing to sculpture, video and sound. The experience in the exhibition is not only of a spectator but also one must listen, move and stay in time. The tensions embodied between the different components are directing the visitors in to a liminal space, a place that is constantly in between, undefined, without pulling to one direction, without going forward but also not going backwards. It’s an eternal state, a diffusion, of being on the way.
This in between state exists as a fundamental component of the visitors experience and also as part of the relationship between all the elements that create the exhibition. In view of the scenario happening in the space, many questions are raised about the links between existence and materiality: who is more present in the space? Does one medium have a more tangible presence than the other? Can a video have a plastic presence? Can an object have the presence of sound?
The different parts of the exhibition are brought to the viewers in a fluid state, there edges are blurred and sink one in to the other until it's hard to tell them apart: the drawings on the walls where created with inspiration from dancer who visited Hirsch's studio, whereas the video depicts a manipulation that is reacting to the sculptured objects and drawings in the space.
This exhibition model is driven directly from Hirsch's work process, which began with one medium and passed on to another from the need to find the most fitting expression for this work and not necessarily for the artist himself. In this manner the exhibition was formed not as a finishing point but as a land mark on the way. The works did not leave the studio when finished, signed and sealed, on the contrary: with their arrival at the gallery space all options are reopened and the new links create a fertile ground for evolution and change.
Hagar Bril
March 2017