Outset Israel supported Ronen Shaharabani's exhibition 'Snap To Grid' at Nahum Gutman Museum of Art, curated by Marie Shek.
During one of Ronen Sharabani's trips to Bezalel, he looked down and discovered the view of the village Issawiya. Looking upon the village during sunset, exaggerated the shape of the buildings and as a result created a hybrid of both a realistic and fictional image. Such the poor village became a grand shiny tower. The artist's subjective interpretation is an esthetic and unique expression to the voice of Issawiya. The artist dismantled the territorial structure of the village into his work and uprooted the houses from the ground in order to create a new virtual reality.
The name of the exhibition: 'Snap to Grid', originates from the computer command meant to sort the digital icons. By clicking the button, one can create a new structural order, an action which is the basis of his work. This magic digital button is the dream of anyone aspiring for order, for a simple solution, for an external intervention in the form of that same button which will sort out the chaos. The conflict in the work is expressed in the phrase 'Snap to Grid', which supposedly helps us organise our space but in the same breath overrides the undefined and unmarked spaces. The works collaborate with the hidden grid but at times try to undermine its definitions, to create chaos, and from it create a new grid or examine the old.
Ronen Sharabani, multidisciplinary artist, paints, sculpts and creates video installations. Both while being influenced by the classic arts, he entered the digital world and dove into the secrets of technology. The tools of such a plastic medium allow the artist to create a sculptural materialistic environment within a virtual world. The basis of the exhibition lay on the belief that everything the artist does in his life is part of a structured pattern, a grid, which is accompanied by a daily soundtrack, telling each person right or left, forward or backwards. This motion is in fact the dance of life. Sometimes the grid leads us and at other times we lead it, depending on the internal dialog we each have with ourselves. The french philosopher Jean Baudrillard predicted the turning of the spectacular theatre of terror into the new form of violence of this age, and the disintegration of the public space. This chaotic space is turned by Sharabani's hands into hope, through which he changes reality into an act of esthetic virtual creation, one which is almost optimistic.
Ronen Sharabani (b. 1974, Israel) studied in NY painting and sculpture and worked in the Film Industry in NY and LA, lives and works in Tel-Aviv.
ON VIEW: December 2016 - April 2017
