| The boldness of Zadok Ben David’s solo exhibition, Human Nature, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, lies in its investigation of the human condition without relying on commonly central themes like evil, depression, death, and loneliness. These have come to provide a kind of safety net for many artists as they are always relevant, and easily lend themselves to an aura of heroism, intellect, or whatever. Ben David does not present a rosy picture of the world; however, he addresses a sense of inner vitality, a human bond to that which is not necessarily tangible, evincing faith in the possibility and strength afforded by change and in the sheer wonder of life. The earliest of the 17 sculptures on display at the museum’s Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Pavilion dates back to 2005, and the majority of the works were made in the past two years. |
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Smadar Sheffi
The boldness of Zadok Ben David’s solo exhibition, Human Nature, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, lies in its investigation of the human condition without relying on commonly central themes like evil, depression, death, and loneliness. These have come to provide a kind of safety net for many artists as they are always relevant, and easily lend themselves to an aura of heroism, intellect, or whatever.
Ben David does not present a rosy picture of the world; however, he addresses a sense of inner vitality, a human bond to that which is not necessarily tangible, evincing faith in the possibility and strength afforded by change and in the sheer wonder of life.
The earliest of the 17 sculptures on display at the museum’s Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Pavilion dates back to 2005, and the majority of the works were made in the past two years. In many respects, this is a cohesive, well-designed exhibition. The hall’s clear; clean space is preserved so that it complements the sculptures on display. The white space enveloping the silhouettes of the sculptures is just as important as their material boundaries, establishing a significance to the space in which the interiority of the artwork unfolds.
While one can characterize Ben David’s sculpture in traditional terms like reduction (such as stone or wood sculpture) or addition (metal, plastics and more), one can best interpret the artist’s work as a breath, in which the inhalation and exhalation are of equal importance. These give way to the vitality of the sculptures, which seem to pulsate in time and memory, bearing the trace of a heartbeat.
Beyond the beauty of Ben David’s sculptures in these spaces (and more so in the captivating installation Blackfield, shown in the Marcus B. Mizne Gallery on the museum’s lower level), the exhibition is interesting due to its complex images, which combine a religious dimension with a disavowal of basic cultural conceptions relating to the human condition.
Ben David’s human figures, larger than human scale (except for one sculpture), are made of fragments. He sculpts in metal (aluminum, stainless steel, Corten steel), which he cuts by hand. From afar, the lines appear smooth and the sculpture as a whole, not only the part that represents a shadow on the floor, creates the sense of a silhouette, an evasive image on the brink of disappearance. On the other hand, up close, a sense of coarseness stands out, demonstrating a search for the inner life of image and material. All of the human figures address the possibility of metamorphosis or a more extreme state in which human, animal and plant—three distinct categories in various versions of the creation story (forming the backbone of the three monotheistic religions)—are not separate.
Leftovers, an almost three-meter-high sculpture, shows the backside of a man. The outline of his body is made up of bare branches, as if placed in different angles to suggest bodily contours, leaving room for viewers to fill in the blanks—whether it’d be the shoulder, neck, or arm. These bodily scraps, along with their interwoven absences and references to nature—embodied by the figure and representing the space in which it dissolves—give way to a strong figure that seems to draw its strength from the ground. The legs coalesce into one strong leg, but the shadow underneath does not represent a disfigured or alternative picture of the sculpture, but acts as an independent entity that once again suggests that the body harbors the potential for other entities.
The sculptures of plant life are very beautiful, perhaps more serene but no less complex. Pieces like Sunrise and Sunny Moon, both from 2009, are made of painted aluminum illustrated to look like a circular cutout (150 centimeters in diameter), which seems to offer the view of a barren tree through binocular lenses, or a microscopic view of blood vessels. Both of these images connect to the religious dimension of Ben David’s work, due to the resemblance they share with stained-glass windows and the aura that emerges from the bodies of Christian saints, and in depictions by Eastern religions and a variety of Buddhist schools. The sculpture Spring Morning shows the image of a tree that is made up entirely of human figures. The sculptures address the subject of metamorphosis, the scientific dimension of which influenced cultural conceptions from at least the Enlightenment.
Blackfield is a breathtaking work of art. A preliminary version was shown in the U.K. in 2007, and it has since been shown in the U.S. and at the Singapore Bienniale. It is due to be shown at the Nantong Museum in China and at the acclaimed Busan Biennale in South Korea. The version in Tel Aviv, which features 20,000 tiny flowers, is the largest that Ben David has made. The flowers, made from painted stainless steel, “sprout” from the sand in a huge cluster, creating a vision that celebrates the capacity of humans and nature to recover from apocalyptic scenarios.
At first sight, upon entering the hall, the field of black flowers, together with its sense of wholeness, erectness, and beauty yield a profound, almost painful acknowledgment of artifice. They resemble plant life drawings from Muslim and Christian botanical studies, their scientific illustrations evincing a wealth of knowledge as well as the ambition to control nature. In the art historical context they recall the painstaking precision and beauty of botanical drawings by Northern Renaissance artists like Rogier van der Weyden from the 15th century.
Nevertheless, Ben David’s flowers are a far cry from realism. Some of the plants are imaginary crossbreeds between extant plants; others are completely imaginary, and in many cases the plants that spurred the artist’s imagination grow in different climates and times. They are all shown together, making up an impossible, dreamlike field. Each flower is black on the front and hand-painted in different colors on the reverse, the palette of which is not restricted to scientific accuracy. Circling the installation, viewers experience the magical moment at which the black field comes ablaze with color. The sharp switch from black to color generates the sense of moving from a field that appears to be covered with nuclear ash, the aftermath of some type of ecological catastrophe, to an overflowing experience of color, so that the piece, as an elegy of nature, becomes a song of praise for redemption.
The option given here, which is usually not offered in the world outside of art, is to repeatedly decide which standpoint to assume. The viewer becomes a kind of Gulliver or Alice in Wonderland, figures that become especially aware of their physical size and place in the world but who also experience the magic of an alternative reality. The way in which Ben David creates this magic, which, on the one hand, cannot be grasped, but on the other is entirely concrete, is the secret behind Blackfield.
