The Original Nature (2006)

Solo exhibition at Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art / Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Curator: Ori Dessau

For additional views of the exhibition, click here (two-page view recommended)

An installation of paintings spread over both levels of the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion. The principle of installation revolved around reconstruction of small booths, comprised of four non-adjacent walls, and made of solid cardboard. The structures and the course of walking through and in between them created, due to their architectural placement and the materials they housed, a process contrasting between that of a Kasbah - ("middle-eastern") neighbourhood, built from low-story houses, dispersed with no hierarchical regard, and that of a contemporary art fair, built as a system, from detachable and transportable parts. The entire show included six booths, three חסeach level. The top level, the entrance level simulating a Kasbah, exhibited materials inspired by one of the Jewish neighbourhoods in the Tunisian island of Djerba. "Genre" paintings depicting architectural structures (schools, synagogues, religious elementary class rooms), day-to-day scenes, and (painted) objects functioning as holy vessels, decorations and symbols

On the lower level, designed as an art fair - typical scenes from a contemporary lsraeli suburb - play, fashion, army, science, celebrities.

The show poses the question of lsraeliness sliced into several sub-themes - Judaism, Arabism, militarism, feminism, capitalism, media and science as materials found in an undefined period under a general definition of past and present, as materials subject to physical and interpretational transportation, open to ideological, political and financial appropriation.

For further reading: “The Painting Prior to the Painting, Thoughts on Eli Petel’s Exhibition at Helena Rubinstein Pavilion at Tel Aviv Museum of Art” by Aim Deuelle Lusky (2006, Hebrew) PDF download