Across a Dark Land
Podbielski Contemporary , Berlin, Berlin, 09/19/2014 - 10/15/2014
ABOUT
Podbielski Contemporary presents for the second time the Israeli artist Ohad Matalon with his most recent project, a series of images entitled Across a dark Land, shown for the first time in Berlin. Ohad Matalon is one of the most acclaimed and respected Israeli lens-based artists (http://theculturetrip.com). On this occasion Professor Martina Corgnati of the Accademia Albertina-Torino has written an in-depth essay.
Ohad Matalon takes us into a Land of Darkness, with no people, almost no life and no daylight. All that attracts the artist’s attention are single buildings or structures, even fragmented things, sometimes isolated trees, lonely and solitary. They seem to be leftovers of a disappeared world. A strangeness made stronger thanks to the night, that is, in itself, a “different”, meaningful dimension: beloved by Romantics and Surrealists, the dark, obscure night is a metaphor of perdition, transgression and departure from reason. Choosing residual elements, abandoned in space in front of a vague, open, blurred and borderless horizon, specifically shot at night, Matalon doesn’t only force his viewer but also photography itself to face strangeness, to be out, excluded from a more typical and familiar dimension.
So let’s get closer: we are, clearly at least in some images, in a war zone. Target ii, Zeelim and A Safety House, Urim, look like riddled buildings; innumerable shots, or blows, pulled the plaster out, wrecked the walls, broke the partitions down. Even the war itself seems to have abandoned them. These images do not inform, do not side with, nor take a stand. The media world and the information channels, especially today, are literally cannibalizing the Middle East greedily waiting for an image that denounces, blames, and distinguishes between good and bad.
Ohad Matalon’s work generates questions and problems, and distressing ones. It does not give any answer. His images undoubtedly portrait fragments of reality. So, this is in fact the reality of someone who lives on a bleeding border and is constantly under pressure or under attack.
Matalon does not hide the political, military and even openly violent evocation that his subjects carry, but nevertheless he bestows on them a very theatrical aura, entirely artificial, that tackles the very nature of the photographic image. It is a fragment of reality but also a set, a stage. Where are we? What do we want to be told? What are we looking for? Violence, beauty, history, spectacularity? Ohad Matalon’s images refer openly to the classic, XVIII century aesthetic concept of sublime but they propose a new, convincingly contemporary version of it.
The exhibition at Podbielski Contemporary is part of the 6th European Month of Photography Berlin, beginning on the 16th October – on this occasion we will have a special event. Ohad Matalon exhibits his recent works in a solo show at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in November 2014.
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Podbielski Contemporary presents for the second time the Israeli artist Ohad Matalon with his most recent project, a series of images entitled Across a dark Land, shown for the first time in Berlin. Ohad Matalon is one of the most acclaimed and respected Israeli lens-based artists (http://theculturetrip.com). On this occasion Professor Martina Corgnati of the Accademia Albertina-Torino has written an in-depth essay.
Ohad Matalon takes us into a Land of Darkness, with no people, almost no life and no daylight. All that attracts the artist’s attention are single buildings or structures, even fragmented things, sometimes isolated trees, lonely and solitary. They seem to be leftovers of a disappeared world. A strangeness made stronger thanks to the night, that is, in itself, a “different”, meaningful dimension: beloved by Romantics and Surrealists, the dark, obscure night is a metaphor of perdition, transgression and departure from reason. Choosing residual elements, abandoned in space in front of a vague, open, blurred and borderless horizon, specifically shot at night, Matalon doesn’t only force his viewer but also photography itself to face strangeness, to be out, excluded from a more typical and familiar dimension.
So let’s get closer: we are, clearly at least in some images, in a war zone. Target ii, Zeelim and A Safety House, Urim, look like riddled buildings; innumerable shots, or blows, pulled the plaster out, wrecked the walls, broke the partitions down. Even the war itself seems to have abandoned them. These images do not inform, do not side with, nor take a stand. The media world and the information channels, especially today, are literally cannibalizing the Middle East greedily waiting for an image that denounces, blames, and distinguishes between good and bad.
Ohad Matalon’s work generates questions and problems, and distressing ones. It does not give any answer. His images undoubtedly portrait fragments of reality. So, this is in fact the reality of someone who lives on a bleeding border and is constantly under pressure or under attack.
Matalon does not hide the political, military and even openly violent evocation that his subjects carry, but nevertheless he bestows on them a very theatrical aura, entirely artificial, that tackles the very nature of the photographic image. It is a fragment of reality but also a set, a stage. Where are we? What do we want to be told? What are we looking for? Violence, beauty, history, spectacularity? Ohad Matalon’s images refer openly to the classic, XVIII century aesthetic concept of sublime but they propose a new, convincingly contemporary version of it.
The exhibition at Podbielski Contemporary is part of the 6th European Month of Photography Berlin, beginning on the 16th October – on this occasion we will have a special event. Ohad Matalon exhibits his recent works in a solo show at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in November 2014.