Eli Petel – Installation (2001)

Solo exhibition at Artists’ Studios, Tel Aviv

The installation revolved around the possibility to produce critical social expression by positioning ready-made objects, with "Artistic" markers associated with the generic production of art

The installation included five objects: a car (the artist's car, parked and locked in the gallery for the duration of the show, with its car seat headrests laying on the hood of the car), a bench (which was painted in a gradient technique with Israeli flag colors, on top of which laid a flashing bicycle light), an air conditioner (Trompe l'oeil sculpture made of cardboard, mimicking the gallery's original air conditioning units), a painting (painted with felt-tip pens, depicting three known figures from Israeli popular culture - entertainer Dudu Topaz, actor Albert lluz and singer Avi Toledano - seated at a table packed with drinks and food) and a pair of speakers (playing a "House" style music track, produced from samples of car door slams

The show dealt with the transience and permanence of image/matter, the prominence or camouflage of the visible (what is considered creative, the association between figurative and abstract and between ornamental and functional), and how the interior and exterior can be confronted in .comparison to cultural state versus mental state

The show, which aroused great interest in the local art world due to the innovative nature of treatment of local motifs - financial, ethnic, cultural, using radical artistic gestures, has led to a number of shows dealing with aspects of "cultural taste", linking the term "Mizrahi" (of middle-eastern extraction) to popular culture and visual art