Passage
27.01 - 17.02. 2024
Curator: Nir Harmat
Grosso Modo Gallery / Tel Aviv, Israel
Liliana Orbach's exhibition aims to explore the intersection of emotions and awareness by merging the rational and the emotional. Through a series of video works, she transforms collective memories into abstract and emotional experiences. These moments come together to create a shadowy theater, shaped by the connections and contexts of language, conflict, chance, fate, creation, and creativity.
The starting point of her series of works is based on Nietzsche's book 'The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music' and his writings about Greek mythology, and also on the story of Charlotte Salomon, a young artist who left behind a series of watercolor paintings built as a theatrical-narrative play and based on her life in Berlin before she was captured by the Nazis. Orbach's sources of inspiration are interlaced in her story, sharpening the gap between ethics and aesthetics. The artistic translation, which sometimes flows into abstraction, describes in an aesthetic language moments of horror. This gap creates an absurd mise-en-scène, a theater of ghosts that relies on reality and channels it into an artistic expression, creating a distance between the real and its representation.
The exhibition delves into both known and unknown histories, inviting viewers on a journey through the depths of consciousness. Within this exploration, the relationships between memory, pain, sorrow, and wounds are reflected back to us through the enchanting and silent performance of mirrors.
Nir Harmat - January, 2024
The Hunt, an ongoing walking, searching, hiding within a primeval, sublime forest, with no clear motive or propose, focusing on the viewer’s uncertain, apprehensive and fearful expectation.
The Count, a silent video work that deals with time, order and identity issues, in an ongoing, rigorous and systematic rhythm.
Lullaby, composed by three small video screens, uses the beauty of melodious tunes and the flowing gestural expressions to portray a musical performance of obscure connotations.
The Question, based on a written dialog between two characters belonging to the Greek mythology, which expose disturbing aspects concerning the true essence of human nature.
Mise en Scène depicts a surreal landscape of poetical, yet most disturbing character; a looping tragedy that surpasses the limits of place and time; a theatrical play of recurring beginnings and ends.
