Simple Fractions II

"Simple Fractions II" is a work from the series with the same name, considered to be a turning point in Amikam Toren’s practice. One day on a street in London, the artist finds smashed milk bottles and picks up their broken pieces. Cautiously manipulating these pieces as though they were precious archaeological remains, Toren restores the ordinary milk bottle by reassembling the fragments. He also maps out a finely rendered drawing of the fragments, which accompanies the reconstituted object on display and becomes part of the installation. The type of glue utilized by Toren for this reconstitutive action dries with a brownish black colour, thus rendering the restoration process apparent by showing the lines of fracture on the bottle. Toren is interested in the precision of destruction processes and in interrogating the possibilities of faithfully representing these processes.

"Words Are Very Unnecessary", exhibition view, Arter, 2019.