Artist Oren Pinhassi was a guest of Outset Bialik Residency during July - September 2017, for the preparations of his solo exhibition "Springs" at Petach Tikva Museum of Art, curated by Marie Shek. In continuous of this residency, the work 'Untitled (Towel Bricks)', 2017, was donated in the name of the artist and Outset Contemporary Art Fund Israel to the Petach Tikva Museum of Art collection.
Towels are mass produced objects which we immediately perceive as made for us. They are perceived as bodily objects because we already have an intimate knowledge, through repetitive daily use, of their function of absorbing liquids, dirt, and excess water from our body. The towel-bricks can be thought of as a "unit of construction" both physically, conceptually and linguistically. The work is combining into one unified object, different types of labor and identity, for example - a construction worker laying bricks, together with a worker that is folding towels at a laundry place, a spa or an hotel. By dipping the ready-made hand towels in plaster and pigment, and then rolling them in the same way one would roll a towel at a hotel or a spa, I’m transforming them into bricks but also asking questions like: How can we re-think construction? Where and what is a construction site? Who is the builder?
The towel-bricks are objects that involve, as part of their logic, a of loss of boundaries between categories - they were produced under a logic of hybridity, which is at once erotic and political because it involves relinquishing control over borders.
