Geography, as a research discipline in the fields of Natural, Humanities & Social sciences, developed in the 19th century to a field of study. 'Geo' + 'Graphy', as an action of describing the land, is being researched by Sharon Glazberg with materials such as Asphalt, tiers, crude oil and bubble gum. Through these materials, Glazberg is asking political, cultural social and mythological questions of the concrete being. The Asphalt for example, is a contemporary material representing a significant aspect of the current era; it’s the archeological layer that will represent the present from a future perspective. Glazberg Carves powerful symbols from chunks of asphalt she finds in an illegal garbage dump, trying to reveal the political mechanism of power.
Glazberg hybrids anteater with watermelon, pomegranate with a dog, vine with a cow, wolf with tiers - melting life and death into future fossils, documenting the human possession over nature in the archeological archive. The artificial selection between different types of species, as being suggested by the artist, takes wanted features into the extreme, as it is possible only in the mythological divinity. By doing so - Glazberg is clarifying an option for utopia, Moving aside existential questions and projecting on the violence as it is buried on future land, as traces of humanity.
On the video work ‘Air’, burned hands of a young woman are tying bubblegum balloons to a dried tree. The wind and the precise esthetics creates a visual poem with an inner fracture. In the video work ‘her skin suite’, a little girl hybrids a tree and balloons under water. The repetitive motions in both videos enable this action to look like a fake lamentation.
Glazberg has been investigating the esthetics of death for many years - she seeks for animal corpses whom she cooks, peels, covers with sugar, buries, paints, concrete, digs out skeletons from the ground, hoofs, leftovers of life, melting it all with vegetables and fruits casting. Glazberg frees the death from its final position through acts that are reserved only to God – she allows a beginning of something new.
Sharon Glazberg created ‘Geography of a Salon’ as a site specific exhibition, especially for the ST-ART exhibition space, located in the living room of the art collector Serge Tiroche, examining among other issues, and the position of the art collector in the art scene. The Salon that gathered around the cultural discourse from the early days of the Renaissance (and became later irrelevant), is hosting now (at the house of the modern art patron) Glazberg's future fossils, as they entwined in the house furniture, installed in a way that resembles a Wonderland Room – the first museum prototype.
The Wonderland Room was located in the main living room at the collector house. The fanciest and spacious room of them all was rarely used. This room was packed with an eclectic, secular, private, empiric and fancy collection, of everything, side by side, with no hierarchy or any clear order. The room was trying to reconstruct the act of creation and was a symbol of status for that. The collection was made for building a social reputation and not from any real interest of the art it represents. By that, Glazberg is projecting on the modern collectors and the economical character of the art world today, where the value of an art piece is measured only by one small feature – the artist signature.
The modern collector figure was investigated in many art exhibitions. The most famous one is probably ’The Collectors’ by Elmgreen & Dragset, that was shown at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) as the Danish and Nordic Pavilions. Documentation of this show was on the large exhibition at the Haifa museum of art called ‘Collection’ (2010). In 2006, Israel Museum showed ‘Different Rooms, Different Voices – Contemporary art from FRAC collection’. (Curator - Suzan Landau)
ST-ART is broadening its collection for the past 3 years with over 350 art works of more than 60 Israeli and Palestinians artists. In ‘Geography of a Salon’ Sharon Glazberg refers the collector as creator of a time capsule that enables a precise view of cultural, social and political moves. What then is the role of the artist in creating the mythological? What is the mythology as it is told through wrapped pieces of art, packed in a fancy store house? ST-ART that is usually not hosting solo exhibitions invited Glazberg to have one for the important issues it brings.