NOA TAVORI

Starting Line \Municipal  art gallery, Rehovot 2008

Noa Tavori

Curator: Ora Kraus

 

 

Noa Tavori thinks of the gallery space as a construction site. There are several objects situated in the site, which look like they have a growing potential, but somehow this potential is not fulfilled. For instance, an image of a crane built from woven metal net. The horizontal line of the crane is longer than the vertical one, which upsets the equilibrium of the crane.

Thus, it looks as if the crane is going to fall, its woven end dangling downwards. The crane, naturally designed to lift and move objects, loses its power and is turned into a disfigured object. Tavori also exhibits a construction built of hundreds of wooden sticks, connected by a combination of clay and shredded paper. The sticky papier-mache is piled up in the form of a jagged amorphous object, its connections out of line. The clay sticks and paper have turned into one indistinguishable matter. The zigzagged connection is contradicting the linear nature of the stick, a surprising contradiction. Also exhibited is a wooden table, put diagonally like a springboard or a chute. The table is with cement patches drawn on it. The table, much like the crane, tries to lift itself, but is in fact almost falling. The axis lines of the crane and table stretch until they almost tear, and that is how the objects are expropriated of their original use.  

Tavori treats the constructions she builds as a house metaphor – in which the good order is about to be interrupted, in this moment when the familiar shape reaches out of its limits and turns into something different. The artist's works combine the beautiful and accepted with the neglected and the old. The materials she uses are connected with the organic and faint, which change into a new, richly shaped look, by massive treatment, giving the work an outstanding radiance.  

Tavori builds sites with "masculine" images and materials – cement, grease, cranes. By sisyphean manual work she tries to build shapes and sub-shapes of upwards rising and elevation, eventually leading to avalanche and breakdown.

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