Reminiscence
Odelia Elhanani
Curator: Yair Barak
Reminiscence is a site-specific installation.
A concise sentence.
An orchestrated reflection upon the world that we live in.
Akin to a Haiku poem - Odelia Elhanani crystallizes the essence of our being into
a minimal number of objects: the scene opens with the galleries cemented floor
transformed into a wooden deck, one might say a stage on which the installation.
takes place. The installation’s beating heart appears - large-sized black garbage.
bags, placed one on top of the other, in a seemingly random pile. The bags are.
heavy and are filled with unidentified objects. A soft, yet massive material
stabilizes the bags and transforms them into a monument. A dramatic light
washes over the pile and casts unsettling shadows across the gallery wall. These
are the shadows of truth. Traces of what has happened. Even the occurrence
itself, the platonic truth - is nothing but the remains of a presence, an echo of
what used to be a full and complete existence. And at every moment, faint
sounds flow through the air. Emerge from the walls of the gallery hall. These are.
the sounds of the urban street - vehicles and melodies from a distant piano, all
rising from the depth of the lively metropolis. The notes, played from beyond the
bustling city, are in and of themselves an echo of Mozart requiem. So wounded.
and torn apart that it is left unrecognizable.
On one of the Gallery walls situate another garbage bag. Folded and neatly.
designed into a modern and minimalist black square - a conscious paraphrase of
Malevich’s black squares from the early 20th century, in a non-painted, ready-
made version, which enables this banal, cheap, and unimportant object, to
become transcendent, rapped by an aura, both mystical and magical at the same
time.
This work is about what is left behind. On too much represented by so little.
About a materialistic world that has made us consumption addicts. An entire life
that leaves behind bags filled with cloths, which once covered a body of what.
used to be a person.
Yair Barak