To Lick Your Own Tongue

This summer, the CCA presents three solo projects by Deville Cohen, Luciana Kaplun, and Ariel Reichman. While each installation differs in scope and inspiration, they share a playful and imaginative approach.

In Deville Cohen's Zero viewers navigate a dark labyrinth of paper screens and xeroxes that leads to a video inspired by the television crime drama The X-Files. The work, a rumination on the creation of alternative worlds, stars green rubber "sticky hands" that stand in for the forces of nature, a soccer ball that doubles as an egg, a measuring tape and hourglass that represent time and space, and Jell-O molds of primordial ooze. Through these disparate elements Cohen challenges of the very structure of narrative. He tests representation itself, even the representation of nothingness.

Luciana Kaplun's Gilda centers on Latin American foreign workers who clean Israeli homes and businesses for a living. In Kaplun's project, they form a fictional guild that, beyond serving as a union and support network, takes on pseudo-religious attributes akin to a cult that are inspired by pagan-catholic saint worship. The guild serves as a source of both spiritual and civic empowerment since it's rooted in Marxist unionizing, albeit fictional since no such union exists in Israel. Their connection to the guild might explain some of the strange behavior exhibited by the cleaners, who are filmed in their usual places of work, but are shown stripping and dancing, or trying on their clients' clothes, turning their rather solitary and banal jobs into opportunities for fantasy and role play.

Ariel Reichman's And night they sleep, they do is a site-specific installation built around amplifying the movement of rats from inside walls. Their movement is amplified by microphones, intensifying the visitors' experience of being surrounded by vermin. Peppering the space are other installations that deconstruct the wall, such as a neon light embedded within the plaster. Reichman's work looks to both break down and construct a liminal space that is neither inside nor outside, but the seam between the two.

Deville Cohen (b. 1977, Petach-Tikva, based in New York) studied sculpture at the KHB in Berlin from 2002-2007 and earned an MFA in film and video from Bard College in 2010. His work has been shown at Disjecta, Portland, 2014; the Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas, 2013; SFMoMA, 2012, San Francisco; Greater New York, MoMAPS1, New York, 2010; University of South Florida Institute for Research in Art, 2011; Marlborough Chelsea, 2011; Foxy Productions, New Yrok, 2011; Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv; and Louis B. James Gallery, 2011, among others. He was an artist in residence at EMPAC in 2012 and at Recess Arts in 2010, and has an upcoming residency at the Wooster Group Performance Garage.

Luciana Kaplun (b. 1981, Buenos Aires, based in Tel Aviv) studied at the Midrasha School of Art. As part of the "Artist in the Community" grant by the Ministry of Culture for 2013-14, Kaplun has been working with teenage refugees and children of foreign workers in Israel. Her work has been shown at the Tel Aviv Museum; Museums of Bat Yam; the Minshar Gallery, and Shulamit Gallery in Los Angeles, amongst other venues. She is a former member of Public Movement.

Ariel Reichman (b. 1979, Johannesberg, based in Tel Aviv) has studied at UDK in Berlin and the MFA Program of the Bezalel College of Art and Design. Solo shows include venues such as Frieze New York, Waterside in London, Petach Tikva Museum, PSM Gallery in Berlin, and others. Group shows include Manifesta 8, the Haifa Museum of Art, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Moscow's Modern Art Museum, ZKM Karlsruhe, and other venues.

Curated by Chen Tamir