Contemporary by Golconda opens the season with a new exhibition by the artist Benni Efrat, centered around the installation The Dove, Summer 2062 – in which the letters of the word “shalom” (peace) are carved out of 14 tons of gradually melting ice slabs, alongside a fighter plane made of lead carrying an olive branch, and works from the 1970s.

When our children were born – whether it was yesterday, a year, a decade or several decades ago – we used to say that when they grew up there would be no more wars. Circumstances and facts proved us wrong time after time and showed that this saying, by other and earlier parents, had no grounds in reality – but certainty and disillusionment did not stop us from repeating it again and again, if only as a cliché, a hollow mantra, since without such dreams and hopes, how can one bring children into the world?

This faint hope, an illusion that fades and evaporates even as it is being uttered, and yet without which life is not worth living, is at the heart of the installation The Dove, Summer 2062, created by Benni Efrat for Contemporary Gallery. The lion’s share of the installation is made up of the word “shalom” – peace – its Hebrew letters carved out of vast ice slabs that are gradually thawing and collecting in a pool fitted into the gallery’s floor. A video camera documents the spectacle of the melting ice letters so that it continues to haunt the place like a phantom vision when screened onto the pool, once the ice letters have completely dissolved.

This labor-intensive, dramatic and spectacular pronunciation of the word “shalom” as an expression of the vanity of vanities, a kind of contemporary hourglass, demonstrates the hopelessness of devising plans and lofty ideas in the face of time running out. Yet, every drop that trickles down and punctuates the pathetic and Sisyphean labor of creating the ice placard spelling “shalom” also articulates, however faintly, the heroicness of the act; only in verbally and physically-sculpturally expressing the word “shalom”, and in casting a disillusioned gaze on the absurdity of doing so, can one reside and act in a world that still welcomes newborn babies, works of art, or any alive and vital continuity of the world.

Alongside this installation, in The Dove, Summer 2062 Efrat returns to the biblical epos, with the image of a fighter plane made of lead, carrying an olive branch. This image traps in the heavy and toxic material of the lead a mutant, the crossbreed of a war machine and an animal (which has become an instrument of destruction). The text inscribed on this hybrid image reads: “According to the Old Testament, the dove was the first to be sent forth to explore the land. The dove discovered that the olive tree had defeated the flood. The dove with the olive branch in its beak is a symbol of victory rather than peace.”

Efrat’s work maintains a dialectic between fossilization and floating, freezing and thawing, between the determinism of circumstances and the freedom of imagination, interpretation and invention, which simultaneously forms a living ground and a point of departure for a different view of reality: abandoning a world that stretches between contrasting poles for situations where there is no one privileged decision, exclusive judgment, supreme value, conventional ascription, common characterization, fixed order or normative meaning.

The exhibition is curated by Ronnie Fuhrer.

Contemporary by Golconda

117 Herzl Street
Tel Aviv 66185 Israel
Ph. +972 03 6822777
www.contemporary.co.il

Opening hours

Monday - Thursday from 11am to 7pm
Friday from 10am to 2pm
Saturday from 11am to 2pm

Related images
  1. Benni Efrat, Red Aid, Summer 2062 3, 2014, acrylic on paper, 70 x 100 cm
  2. Benni Efrat, Untitled 4 (2032), 1984, acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm
  3. Benni Efrat, Red Aid, Summer 2062 2, 2014, acrylic on paper, 70 x 100 cm
  4. Benni Efrat, Untitled 3 (2032), 1984, acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm
  5. Benni Efrat, Peace 2014, HD time lapse movie of peace performance sep 19th 2014 xx minutes
  6. Benni Efrat, Untitled 2 (2032), 1984, acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm