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9/3/2005

Ofri Cnaani

Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York

The Andrea Meislin Gallery presents our first one-person exhibition of photographs, drawings, and videos by New York based Israeli artist Ofri Cnaani.

Inspired by media imagery of violent occupation and incarceration, Cnaani's new work investigates the global ritual of violence from a fresh perspective. In her commanding black and white ink drawings the oppressing soldiers are replaced with forceful feminine figures, revealing a dark world that contends with the erotic dimensions of combat and the absurdities of war. With this potent reversal the connection between multiple aspects of the human desire for domination and the resulting inevitable powerlessness are explored.

In the short video piece Quartet, four women bounce a white sculpture in what initially looks like a casual social event. As the video progresses the women violently destroy the object, an asymmetrical, tilted head with closed eyes that resembles Constantine Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse, a symbol of purity and smoothness. Toward the end of the video the women’s gentle hands are covered with dust, turning art into craft and converting a naïve social ceremony into an encounter with death.

In the gallery entrance, Master-Slave Hunger is a video and sound installation made in collaboration with Grundik Kasyansky (Grundik + Slava, http://www.grusla.com). This corridor piece is the viewer’s first encounter with the exhibition and precedes the entrance to the main gallery. The condensed sound in the narrow space exposes the spectator to a symbolic narrated dream describing a fight based on a text by Lior Galili. While the sound is physical and ever-present, the images void the protagonists by lighting the corridor as a half-empty dramatic stage. Taken together the sounds, images and walls evoke the complex relationships that exist between architecture and narrative.

Ofri received her MFA from the Hunter College Studio Program in 2004 and holds her BFA from the Beit Berel Art College in Israel. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and screenings in the US and abroad, and presented various exhibitions in Israel and Europe including: Going Public 04, Modena (2004), Galleria Pack, Milan (2004); Herzliya Museum of Art (2003); Gallery, Tel Aviv (2003); Art Focus 4, International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2003). Ofri is the recipient of two prestigious awards from the American Israel Cultural Foundation.

Andrea Meislin Gallery
526 W 26th Street, Suite 214 New York, New York 10001
The gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday from 10 am - 6 pm. For further information please contact Andrea Meislin or Lisa Romandetto.

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