Outset Israel supported Yair Barak's new work 'I'd Rather Not', which was shown at his exhibition 'Moving away from something he stares at' at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
In the past fifteen years, Yair Barak has created a wide, consolidated body of work that places him with the most interesting and important voices of Israeli photography. He explores photography’s role as a medium by deconstructing aesthetic structures of power. He examines the documentary quality of the photographic medium as well as its story-telling abilities. Barak's work is composed of direct photography, which denotes, signifies and asserts a random encounter between gaze and object, and of disruption processes that sabotage constitutive historical narratives of Western culture. He turns the mundane into monumental, while presenting the monument as secular.
The exhibition 'Moving away from something he stares at' brought together traditional display and sculptural installation, placing the viewer in the role of a mediator. The extensive range of works on view reflected Barak's intensive study of power, of the institutional historical representations and the visual and ideological nature of photography. Alongside works that conform to traditional photographic genres, Barak "invades" territories of installation and sculpture, thus extending the discourse of his work. The riddle Barak offers in his photographs requires deep study and careful reading, summoning the viewer on to a fascinating journey in the kingdom of imagery, in the world of the concept within the maze of Western culture.
ON VIEW: 8th October 2014 - 31st January 2015
