Unfinished Business (2022)

Le Guern Gallery, Warsaw (with Rafal Jakubowicz)

The exhibition “Unfinished Business” is an encounter between Eliyahu Fatal and Rafał Jakubowicz: artists who have known each other and collaborated for years. It presents two approaches to the exploration of the Hebrew language in the context of contemporary conceptual art.

Eliyahu Fatal’s poem in the form of a spatial installation entitled "Melting Symbol" stems from a fascination with words and the great potential of language as generator of meanings and interpretations, as a tool, and as a conveyor of content. In referencing the shapes of letters, Fatal reflects on the polysemic capacity of words. He draws from various traditions to combine fonts, typefaces, and handwriting. In effect, he confronts the audience with clichéd symbols and associations and makes them experience a juxtaposition between the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, the sacred and the profane, the permanent and the transient. He orchestrates a game between letters and writing in which every single thing references something other than itself.

In "Blood and Ink", Rafał Jakubowicz references ספר האות (pronounced “Sefer ha-Ot”), The Book of the Sign by Rabbi Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, completed in 1288. Jakubowicz transposes an excerpt from this work into the context of contemporary art because he is interested in the conceptual potential of Kabbalah when applied to text. The proximity of the methods developed by the Kabbalistic tradition to the post-conceptual strategies means that a work of art using the Hebrew language and inspired by the Jewish mystical tradition can be read on different levels: as a work of conceptual art and as a work demanding familiarity with Judaism. Jakubowicz refers to his practice as Kabbalistic conceptualism. Besides appreciating the multidimensionality of Hebrew, whose words have multiple meanings and uses, the two artists also share an interest in gematria. By assigning a numerical value to each letter, gematria sharpens the complex meaning of the reality being read.