Mar 23, 2011-May 20, 2011
Curator: Liora Belford
START Residence
‘Intervals’, Yonatan Levi and Shay Id Alony’s mutual exhibition, wishes to examine the way the individual realizes his validity through dialogue with the other.
Levy arouses life in the intervals between his figures; he seeks to discern the body language, the gestures and the dialogue between them. He draws them up to the point where they no longer exist on their own and then leaves them be, entwined in one another, consisting of each other, fulfilled by each other as if they lack independent validation.
On the other hand, Shay Id Alony exhibits the wounded towers which he first exhibited at ‘Art TLV’ in 2009. Id Alony’s towers are exhibited as a cluster of phallic elements which present modern architecture that conquers space - aggressive, ostentatious and dynamic. The timeless human will to reach the highest peak and beyond, initially created a contest between man and nature, but soon became a social class battlefield between man and himself, over the wish to be stronger and to supremely control the territory, to reach higher and faster. Id Alony’s wounded towers exhibit the dialectics in the need to differentiate oneself from the other, only in order to control it, without the wish to genuinely be separated from it.
The meeting between Levy and Id Alony, as a visual discussion, is in this sense part of an on-going issue that deals with the human being as a socio-political creature, as described by Aristotle in his book “Politics” by ‘Zoon Politikon’ (and likewise throughout history; Nietzsche, Levinas, Buber, Marx, Heidegger, De-Beauvoir and many others).
Yonatan Levy and Shay Id Alony present two alternatives of potential attitudes to the other - an instrumental mode versus a human one. Levy exhibits in his paintings moments of sublime interpersonal dialogue which exist only when man meets the divine, through the meeting with the other. On the other hand, Id Alony indicates the alienation that exists in the interpersonal experience in the modern world, when a person meets his fellow-man with a utilitarian attitude. This attitude does not have to be fundamentality evil or manipulative, and seems to be the case in our everyday experience. But at the core of our existence, it carries the power to define us.
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