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19/9/2007

Ofri Cnaani

Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York

Two Dimensional Days

The Andrea Meislin Gallery is pleased to present Two Dimensional Days, our second solo exhibition by New York-based artist, Ofri Cnaani. The show will consist of 30 new ink on Mylar drawings from two series, Two Dimensional Days and Oriental Landscapes. A catalogue with an essay by Nuit Banai will accompany the exhibition. There will be an opening reception for the artist on September 20, from 6 to 8 PM.

Cnaani's new body of work expands upon the artist's earlier investigations into power-relations, gender roles, and the nature of visuality. Allusions to the history of art and references to film abound in both series, with each drawing functioning as a single frame within a larger narrative. As Banai states in her catalogue essay, Staging Spectatorship, "Cnaani invites the viewer to approach the ensuing vignettes as a meditation on the relationship between art production and visual consumption, making and owning, desiring and collecting, and the force fields of power that are rooted within them."

Two Dimensional Days examines the confused relationship between subjects and objects, through a progression of episodes in the life of the series' protagonist (an artist). Various art world figures - curators, dealers, and collectors - are depicted, in somewhat ambiguous spaces, alongside the art objects they covet. By flattening everything into two dimensions, Cnaani creates a claustrophobic social setting and a sense of tension, which is evidenced by the apparent detachment of individual figures.

In the second series, Oriental Landscapes, Cnaani offers a representation of the Middle East as both a romantic and catastrophic place. Here, she addresses another aspect of the cotemporary art environment, the relationship between American and European "connoisseurs" and non-Western art. By situating recurring figures from Two Dimensional Days within hyperbolic landscapes featuring camels, palm trees, and grape vines, Cnaani emphasizes the disconnect between the aims of the foreign curator/dealer/collector and those of local artists and their practices.

Ofri Cnaani has received solo shows at the Haifa Museum of Art (2006) and the Herzliya Museum of Art (2003). Her drawings and video works have been shown in numerous exhibitions and screenings including Disengagement, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2006), The Kitchen, New York (2005), AIM 26, Bronx Museum (2005), and Focus 4, International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2003). She has received two awards from the American Israel Cultural Foundation and was recently granted a Six Points Fellowship. Born in Israel, Cnaani currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Andrea Meislin Gallery
526 West 26th Street - New York
Hours 10 AM to 6 PM, Tuesday - Saturday
Free admission

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