Tsibi Geva: Archeology of the Present
Tsibi Geva, one of Israel’s most prominent and influential artists, presents “Archeology of the Present”, a new, site-specific installation for the Israeli pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition .la Biennale di Venezia –
Tire Wall by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Geva’s most ambitious project to date extends over the exterior of the Israeli Pavilion building as well as through its interior.
Tire Wall by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Tire Wall (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
The pavilion is entirely enveloped with over a thousand used black tires brought in from Israel, tightly tied to each other to create a grid which forms a protective layer of sorts.
Tire Wall by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Although Geva has been working with used tires for many years, this is the first time he has covered the exterior of such a large structure.
Tire Wall (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
This envelope turns the entire pavilion into a sculptural event that is visible from afar and which functions, at first sight, as an outdoor work on the grounds of the Giardini.
Tire Wall (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
The used tires, which are impregnated with a distinct odour, form an organized network of holes imbued with a protective potential, while simultaneously attesting to a state of danger, constituting a powerful material presence, and communicating a charged, urgent visual and political statement.
Paintings, sculptural elements, and found objects
Upon entering the pavilion, the exterior installation is visible once again from the inside, together with an interior installation including paintings, sculptural elements, and found objects, abolishing hierarchical distinctions between artistic mediums and structures.
Lattice by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Lattice, Altneuland (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
In a year when curator Okwui Enwezor proposes to focus on “All the World’s Futures,” Geva’s site-specific, all-encompassing installation may also be read with regard to the current state of humanity and the world.
Lattice (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
His long-term engagement with the stratified structure of identity, and Archeology of the Present” in particular, offer an opportunity to explore this notion within the wider narrative of nationality as proposed by la Biennale di Venezia.
Tsibi Geva
Tsibi Geva (b. 1951) has exhibited extensively in major venues in Israel, the United States, and Europe. He works in diverse media, his work often pushing beyond its physical limits into unique large-scale, site-specific installations.
Archeology of the Present” gives expression to Geva’s ongoing concern with elements related to the notion of ‘home’ – including terrazzo tiles, windows, shutters, lattices, and cement blocks elements which exist as fragments of what once was, or could in principle constitute, a home, yet not as the vestiges of an actual, concrete house.
The concept of home, which repeatedly resurfaces in Geva’s work over the years, thus remains, a locus of distilled longing; an unrealized dream about a coherent, unquestioned identity.
Stutter Wall by Tibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Hadas Maor, curator of The Israeli Pavillon at the Art Biennale 2015, comments in the catalogue that “The project encompasses the thematic and formal characteristics that have come to define Geva's work over time.
Shutter Wall (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Using the exterior as well as the interior of the pavilion, it destabilizes familiar divisions between inside and outside, the functional and the representational, high and low, abandoned, found, and modified elements.
Stutter Wall by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
It raises self-reflexive artistic concerns and epistemological questions, as well as political and cultural questions pertaining to locality and immigration, hybrid identity, existential anxiety and existence in an age of instability.
Wall (1992/2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Integration between different formal and cultural orders
A significant axis in Geva’s work is the integration between different formal and cultural orders. Rather than underscoring the difference between the Middle-Eastern grid and the Western one Geva produces hybrids that assimilate one pattern into another, one discursive order into the other.
Installation view by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
His multi-layered oeuvre contains numerous layers of significance which are shaped by processes of figuration and abstraction, revelation and concealment.
Installation view by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
The question of painting in particular and of the art object in general, is present in his work alongside political and cultural questions, which simultaneously camouflage and enhance one another.
Boidem (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Employing strategies of disruption and displacement, repetition and accumulation, Geva generates liminal, hybrid works that open up onto new discursive channels.
Boidem (2015) by Tsibi GevaIsrael - Biennale Arte 2015
Geva’s work is based on different types of obstructions, which always contain gaps and holes through which the gaze can penetrate, but the body cannot pass. The layout of the project within the pavilion creates sharp transitions between experiences of blockage, discomfort, and spatial ambiguity and between intimate, poetic moments, so that fragility and crudeness, lyricism and violence, are inextricably intertwined.
