Men Emptying Content

Mixed-media and live event presented during Contact Point, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2015

Along the walls in one of the exhibition halls of the Israel Museum a temporary parasite structure has emerged for one night only. Placed at some distance from the walls, and parallel to them, this wooden structure was mounted with a panoramic sequence of collages in varying formats. The collages, sourced from reproductions originating from the museum’s own reservoir of Israeli art catalogues, rearranged the original images into new hybrids. The collage cycle still allowed a glimpse into the works hung behind it – masterworks by the likes of Arikha, Lavie and Schlezniak.

At the center of the space, a group of seven men was at work throughout the evening, employed at cutting the images out of the very same depository of catalogues. The men systematically reassembled the images they cut into a large paper blanket that kept growing as the evening progressed: a “patchwork” of multicolored art reproductions.

The process created a bulk of leftover white pages that were emptied of their images, leaving large window-like holes in their midst. These were bundled together, wrapped in paper and labeled, to be given to the audience in attendance.

Artistic director: Renana Raz
Featuring: Nadav Eisner , Mauricio Einhorn, Yonatan Franzus, Gur Kitai, Yonatan Stern Novitzky, Amir Eliad, Rei Raviv and Niv Hirschowitz