Togetherness

Dvir Gallery is proud to announce the opening of a joint exhibition for Jonathan Monk and Ariel Schlesinger, "Togetherness". Jonathan Monk will exhibit a personal work comprised of lasers, drawing on his family history. The work deals with the relation between grandfather, father and son, and relates to the heights of the men of his family. Ariel Schlesinger acts upon a ready-made object (carpets) and hints at an event of the past - the fire at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The high-tech of the lasers in Monk`s work is distinct from the low-tech of the simple objects Schlesinger touches. Still, the attitude is one - poetics of daily life, a shared intimacy. Jonathan Monk was born in 1969 in Leicester, England, he currently lives and works in Berlin. Monk participated in solo and group shows throughout Europe and the U.S.; at the MoMA in New York, the ICA in London, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and de Appel in Amsterdam, to name a few. Monk`s last solo show at the gallery was called "Today is Just a Copy of Yesterday". It included an installation referring to a photograph of the gallery`s courtyard; the photo was photographed every day during the exhibition, so that with the days the image faded continuously. Monk`s works deal with temporality, the passing, questions of origin and copy, yet always using humor. Ariel Schlesinger was born in 1980 in Israel. He is a graduate of Bezalel Academy who now lives and works in Berlin. Schlesinger exhibited solo shows at Dvir Gallery in 2005 and Sadnaot Haomanim in 2006, in the last year he participated in exhibitions at Podnar Gallery in Berlin, Klerxx Gallery in Milano, and the Herzeliya Biennale. Schlesinger`s works are comprised of household objects; his treatment turns ordinary consumer products into rare objects. Schlesinger uses simple technology, a sort of "do it yourself" with household techniques in order to create absurd and poetic acts such as a pair of papers joint in a dance, or a machine that makes soap bubbles and then sets them on fire.