ZBIB EL-ARD - IGAEL TUMARKIN AND SIGALIT LANDAU
October 17th - December 28th 2013
The name for this exhibition Zbib El Ard comes from the Arabic name for a plant (Cynomorium coccineum ) which can be found in only few location around Israel, as it is one of the rarest Mediterranean plants, it spends most of its life underground as a parasite of other plants and has no chlorophyll, that is the reason for its vivid scarlet color.
The exhibition of Landau and Tumarkin together in this sculpture show creates a new body or a Third mind a term coined by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin (“… The complete fusion in praxis of two subjectivities, two subjectivities that metamorphose into a third; it is from this collusion that a new author emerges, an absent third person, invisible and beyond grasp, decoding the silence. “ William S. Burroughs)
Igael Tumarkin and Sigalit Landau, Sbib El-Ard, October 2013
At the entrance to the gallery stands Tumarkin’s bronze sculpture “ A man without a head - Can not. A woman - Can” dated 1995, it is an assemblage made out of the lower part of one of Tumarkin’s most known and critic charged sculptures dated 1967 named “He walked in the fields” (הוא הלך בשדות ) The name for the sculpture was taken from title of Moshe Shamir’s book, and calls against the Zionist ideals of self scarification, and instead of the mutilated torso of the 1967 sculpture there is a cast ashtray and a replica of the Greek winged goddess Nike the goddess of victory. Scattered around the gallery are painted aluminum casts of the artist.
Behind the bronze sculpture are Sigalit’s erected ZBIB’S made of dark purple colored papier-mâché and chicken, wire. Behind, a photograph of a scorched body of a soldier taken by Tumarkin during the Yom Kippur War 1973 at the Golan heights, around the same territory were Landaus photograph on the right showing here trying to reach the Zbib el ard plants.
Three large rectangle sand casts, two on the wall and one laid on the floor created by Landau for the exhibition after her video installation “azkelon” which show a group of young men playing a game called “SAKIN” (knife) or “ARATZOT” (lands) in which the aim of the game is to conquer the land of your opponents by throwing and sticking a knife to “his land “ . The large rectangular framed pieces could resemble formalist abstract paintings or flags, and are in the exact format of 16:9 video frames still.
Two tree trunks wrapped with a Tallith, barbed wire and colored hand marks by Tumarkin work as Totems next to Landau’s salt crystallized Luffa fruit, a fruit when dried is used for rubbing and cleansing the body.