18.01 - 03.03.07
Past Exhibition
ARIEL SCHLESINGER
Opening Thursday January 18 at 7 PM
Klerkx is excited to present the italian solo debut exhibition of young artist Ariel Schlesinger (1980, Israel). The exhibit consists of one large installation, a wall frieze and three smaller works showing the way Ariel explores the intersection of art and emotions that includes at the same time social and personal considerations. The exhibition is like an itinerary leading us through material transformations, artistic and cultural references and citations to our inner world.
In the first room we see a low-tech bricolage installation created by the artist from a recycled wooden staircase, a transformer and an electric drill. From the top of this Bubble Machine small soap bubbles escape in a rhythmic fashion only to explode into flames in the electric grill below.
What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by is a quote from the famous cult novel “The Catcher in The Rye” written by J. D. Salinger (USA, 1919) and published in 1951. This running wall frieze of imprecise and dripping characters is applied on the wall by the artist making use of his own invention: the Grafitti Printer. This simple ‘writing machine’, that seems to have sprung from the prehistoric computer age, is fabricated by the artist using spray cans and punch cards.
In the artists’ work we recognize elements from the Wabi-Sabi philosophy as an important source of inspiration. According to this philosophy, the essence of things is made up of the way our vision and thoughts on objects transcends existence itself. In this context we can see in both works how the artist removed the original function of the recycled objects (e.g. the drill, the staircase) and gave them a new function in a setting charged with meaning created by the artist. The use of the gas, the exploding bubbles on the grill and the words written on the wall are all provocations that challenge our collective imagination and iconography and engage us to think about the social-political role of art in our society.
Ariel Schlesinger graduated in 2003 from the Bazelel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. He spent six months studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The artist recently moved back to Berlin after a three month recidency in Paris. Ariel Schlesinger is working with Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv and Klerkx in Milan.
Tuesday – Saturday 1-7 pm
For more information or photographic material please contact the gallery.
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