Michal Rovner’s Fields of Fire
E.K. Clark
Michal Rovner’s exhibition "Fields of Fire 2005-2006" was inspired by her journey to a remote drilling camp in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Fascinated by the jets of flames that shoot out of the smokestacks as the natural gas is bled off the wells, she filmed and used these elements as her subject matter. Two series are presented here–"Postcards" and "Hybrid Fields" and a series of paintings round out the exhibition.
According to the artist, she was drawn to her subject matter because oil is at the center of the world’s attention–but once there, this reference became merely a jumping off point for a philosophical meditation on time and the human condition–personal and global. In her words: "Here is a situation which is not stable even for a second and its consistency is expressed in an endless, unstoppable tension between what is predicted and what seems to be unknown."
Rovner’s images are out of focus, as if seen from a great distance. It is part of her conscious working process to distill and transform–to take the visible, the particular and make it abstract and universal. Watching her videos, particularly the "Postcards" which are only six by four inches, the viewer must surrender completely to the artist’s internal clock–movement is almost imperceptible–the pace is painfully slow, therein is the enchantment and surprise. Watching a wisp of crimson smoke move across the screen one is transported from an oil field, by way of a poetic drawing in space, to a personal journey into the interior, to a reverie on space and time–"a seismograph of life."
It is precisely Michal Rovner’s propensity to poetic ambiguities that have raised hackles among her Israeli countrymen, not to mention similar reactions from other knee-jerk politicos. She has been attacked for not being "political" enough. In the current political climate only loud, empty rhetorical clichés and plain unvarnished "facts" are mandated as an ethical imperative. One must not discount jealousy and competitiveness from fellow artists. Although, not quite a household name, Michal Rovner has been highly successful–she represented Israel in the 2003 Venice Biennial, had a Whitney retrospective in 2002 and will be showing at the Jeu De Paume, just to mention a few venues.
Michal Rovner’s video work is brainy, challenging and elusive. She carved out a distinct territory for herself where people, phenomena and matter become indistinguishable in her obsessive quest for sublime essences.
