16 апр 2010—15 май 2010
Myopia
What is most interesting to me in a
material is that which is no longer there. The absences, the lacunae,
empty spaces, silences and holes are what draw me in most, as the main
object of the senses. (It so happens that in Hebrew the word shekhikha
—"oblivion" is made up of the same root consonants as the word
khashikha—"darkness").
It follows that the less material there is in
the material, i.e. the less there is of rhe actual material, the more
interesting is the object. This is the reason why I gravitate mostly
toward shards, slivers and fragments. I am interested in traces,
imprints, smudges, flecks, and incidental clues with which I can
reconstruct (remember? invent?) the original narrative. Not an image,
but a place for an image.
I roam through these slivers with a myopic
eye. Nearsightedness smoothes the details, blurs the lines, forces me
(sometimes painfully) to look closer, straining the muscles in my eyes.
In other words, myopia is always a sense of loss. That which is
impossible to see clearly, is compensated by feeling or memory. An
object seen through a myopic eye is always peculiar, imperfect or
awkward.
Myopic art requires time. It is the art of deceleration, "a
stop in the desert". In other words, the audience does not run,
stumbling and panting with a pain in the side, chasing the artist who
sprinted into the avant-garde. Just the opposite, it is if the viewer is
being evacuated. It is impossible to see the object from a distance.
And it isn't a matter of size. It is imperative that you are standing
very close, getting lost in the object or in its chronotope.
Haim
Sokol
