Yael Kanarek
dal 9/9/2010 al 15/10/2010
Segnalato da
9/9/2010
Yael Kanarek
Bitforms Gallery, New York
Notyetness
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Notyetness, a third solo exhibition by Yael Kanarek. With
an art practice that centers on the marriage of language and space, Kanarek studies inner
landscape and its intersection with the geopolitical plane. Employing modes of authorship such as
storytelling and multilingualism, Kanarek manipulates the biographical predisposition of cultural
associations. Her work enters spaces of meaning determined by a global network and the
negotiation of identity that occurs when confronted with multiple systems.
As an Israeli-American, Kanarek's perception is tempered with an awareness of post-national
borderlines. Notyetness, the exhibition's title, is borrowed from an essay by curator Reem Fadda
who uses the term to describe the Palestinian national project. A driving force of action and self-
regeneration, notyetness proposes a constant lack and a state of temporal future arrangements in
Palestinian/Isreali reality. A break in the period of digress, it is a zone where everything is possible.
It is a patient moment that emerges in spatial metamorphoses and disfiguration.
Playing with temporality, the video work "Clock: Jerusalem to Tel Aviv" uses footage shot from
the window of a taxi van and synchronizes the clips to an annual clock. Structured to reflect
current time, the orderly night landscape along Highway 1 changes subtly – keeping the viewer
continuously on the road somewhere between the two cities. Likened to the idea of time travel,
Kanarek poses a theoretical beginning in the ancient city, and an ending in one that is modernized
and cosmopolitan.
In the exhibition Kanarek also uses the square as a basic metaphor for space. At the surface of
these works is a territory that is marked by both Modernism and globalization. "Narratives about
the struggle over space are universal," says Kanarek. "I am interested in psychological spaces of
action."
Probing this universality, the series Nude melds subject and medium. In these squarely formatted
linguistic compositions, the meaning of spatial construct becomes loaded with psychological
baggage. Using bright blues, green and yellow the words "not yet" in Hebrew and Arabic are
organized in the picture plane, describing a collective feeling of mixed emotion. Likewise the word
"white" configures the new interpretations of selected modernist icons, such as Josef Albers
"Homage to the Square". Through the shuffling of physical properties that construct our use of
language (matter, shape and sound), Kanarek's work examines how verbal signifiers operate
emotionally. Also part of the exhibit is an intense look at formal construction of the swastika.
Sensing the body as a creator and destroyer of space, Kanarek tangles her relationship with the
viewer by violently cutting a love letter out of the gallery wall. Left in a state of demolition, chunks
of text sit in remnants along the floor. An area of negotiation, the gallery walls are marked by the
artist in a primal manipulation of territory and relationship. Also visceral, but on a different scale,
clay sculptures in the gallery draw upon personal and imaginative gestures. Using vocabularies of
jewelry and gaming–Kanarek slices into the clay with gold and silver findings, or inserts her fingers
to render the clay into dice.
Biography
Yael Kanarek’s creative practice centers on the fundamental hypothesis that language and
numerals render reality, and that this reality is an entirely subjective unified field. Selected for the
2002 Whitney Biennial, exhibitions of Kanarek's work also include The Drawing Center, New York;
Beral Madra Contemporary Art, Istanbul; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; CU
Museum, Boulder; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; The Jewish Museum, New York; Exit
Art; The Kitchen; American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; LIMN Gallery, San
Francisco; Holster Projects, London; Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh; bitforms gallery, New
York; Nelly Aman, Tel Aviv; Boston CyberArts Festival; HVCCA, Peekskill; Arena 1, Santa Monica;
California College of the Arts, San Francisco; Orsini Palace, Bomarzo; and Sala Uno Gallery, Rome.
Kanarek’s work has also been shown in New York at Kenny Schachter Contemporary, Silverstein
Gallery, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Derek Eller Gallery, A.I.R Gallery, 303 Gallery, and Schroeder
Romero Gallery.
In addition to a Rockefeller New Media Fellowship and an Eyebeam Honorary Fellowship, Kanarek
is also the recipient of grants from the Jerome Foundation Media Arts and New York Foundation
for the Arts; commissions from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Turbulence.org, and
The Alternative Museum; Kanarek’s distinctions also include a Harvestworks residency. In 1999,
she founded Upgrade! International. She holds an M.F.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Yael Kanarek wishes to thank Eyebeam Art & Technology Center.
Image: 'My Mondrian: Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow', 2009, loctite, wood, rubber words in four languages: English, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish 24 x 24 x 2" / 61 x 61 x 5 cm
Press contact: Laura Blereau laura@bitforms.com
Opening Reception: Friday, Sep 10, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
bitforms gallery nyc
529 West 20th St New York NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tue–Sat, 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM