{"id":11859,"date":"2018-03-18T15:46:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T13:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/?p=11859"},"modified":"2018-03-18T15:46:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-18T13:46:44","slug":"sticking-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/sticking-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Sticking Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good intentions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writing content for artists is my job. I do it fast and I enjoy it most of the time. As I hate conflits\u00a0and live in the constant fear that people would be offended because of me, exhibition texts are my favorite. It\u2019s the opposite from being an art critic -which I sometimes do as well. I have no\u00a0choice but being laudatory. The artist is happy -if he isn\u2019t I\u2019ll write it again and again until he\u2019ll be. I\u2019m pleased to see him happy. The viewers get a better understanding of the artistic process at stake. And, most importantly: no one gets hurt<\/p>\n

Over the course of the last years, I wrote many texts for Benjamin Mecz\u2019s projects and\u00a0,exhibitions. I first did it out of friendship. On the corner of a coffee place table in south Tel Aviv I hand wrote him a proposal for the application to the White Night in Paris. He got the gig. I was then since two years the artistic manager of a gallery in Tel Aviv. I was happy there, but I had a sense of longing for the emulation, excitement and risks that I wasn\u2019t taking with my career. For months, Benjamin tried to convince me to quit my job and start as an independent exhibition manager and curator. I was terrified, but when I finally did so, Benjamin -as a thank you present for his legendary obstinacy- was the first I signed as a gallery artist. He was as well the first artist .I exhibited in a solo show, and my first sale was a work by him<\/p>\n

Long story short, I wrote many texts for Benjamin and I owe him big. But, a few days ago, when asked to send a piece about his work for an issue on the theme of \u201cparting\u201d, I went totally dry. I experienced a writer\u2019s block for the first time. I read the previous texts I had written for him, I .looked up at my images folder of his works to try and find something relevant to say. Nothing<\/p>\n

The bond<\/strong><\/p>\n

I took me a while to realize that if I couldn\u2019t find anything to write, it was for the simple reason that Benjamin\u2019s artworks and the notion of parting are incompatible. Rather than dividing .between elements and people, Benjamin\u2019s practice was all about uniting<\/p>\n

\"T3NUITBLANCHE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Benjamin Mecz, T\u00b3 , 2014, 132 T-shirts, 360 x 360 x 490 cm, White Night, Paris<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

T\u00b3 , 2015, is a sculptural installation made of 132 white basic T-shirts, sewed together, and stretched in the form of a cube by the most ordinary kind of polypropylene twine. In short: a simple geographical shape, made out of simple materials. The text accompanying the work writes that this installation is \u201cmore about assembling than sewing together\u201d, which therefore creates solidarity<\/em><\/p>\n

In this work, harmony comes from transforming an individual and universal object into a\u00a0gigantic and collective piece. In other words, a T-shirt is only a T-shirt, but when 132 T-shirts join forces, union becomes art<\/p>\n

The same process is at stake in KNULP, the above-mentioned solo exhibition I organized with Benjamin. The performance \/ installation took place in october 2015, in the courtyard of one of Paris\u2019 most beautiful libraries<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1870\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_4622\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_1831\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Benjamin Mecz, KNULP , white canvas and paper, 2100 x 950 cm, Biblioth\u00e8que Historique de la Ville de Paris, 2015<\/strong><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

KNULP consists of 200 square meters of canvas Benjamin sewed together during the course of\u00a0two months and laid down in the courtyard of the library. The white on white canvas recreates ,the cover of the eponym novel Knulp by Herman Hesse, that Benjamin found in a street of Paris and for which he grew a fascination. In Hesse\u2019s novel, Knulp is a lonesome wanderer. He lives and dies alone. Benjamin aimed to transcend the hero and pay him his respect by bringing as many people he could around, and on, the artwork<\/p>\n

During the four day long performance, people were invited to walk on the canvas in order to soil\u00a0it -interestingly enough, most visitors didn\u2019t dare to \u201ctouch\u201d the artwork, I doubt it would have been the same in Israel. Obviously, they couldn\u2019t know they were creating the artwork by the mere fact of being there . By the end of the exhibition, most of the canvas was blackened, only the word KNULP stood out, white as snow<\/p>\n

Togetherness<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"MilleLions\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Benjamin Mecz, Mille Lions , 2014, plastic and glue, variable dimensions<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

The connections created by the seam, the solidarity of those simple elements assembled define Benjamin\u2019s ethos as an artist. That is why I can\u2019t think of parting when I reflect on Benjamin\u2019s works. May it be in the materials, or in the way he considered his practice, he was all about community and togetherness. As utopist as it may sound in our individualistic current conventions, Benjamin foresaw his artworks as a collaboration and a collective adventure, with
\n.other artists, and his public<\/p>\n

His decision of coming back to Israel two years ago was related to that ideal. I didn\u2019t always agree with him, but Benjamin felt a bigger solidarity in the Israeli art community. He might have felt this way because the scene is smaller than the Parisian one. I believe it is rather that with much less public subventions, galleries and initiatives than in Europe, the Israeli artists are forced to get together and create their own opportunities, exhibitions and collaborative spaces<\/p>\n

,Benjamin invented a play on words to describe that feeling: \u201cterrain vague \/ nouvelle vague\u201d\u00a0which means wasteland \/<\/em> new wave<\/em><\/p>\n

This way of seeing art as a communion reminds me of one of his early works, \u201cMille Lions\u201d\u00a0."another play on words: \u201cA Thousand Lions\u201d, which, when said very fast sounds like \u201cMillions" As we say in French L\u2019Union fait la force –\u00a0<\/em>Unity is strength<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u05dc\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u05e9\u05d5\u05d5\u05e8\u05e5 \u05e2\u05dc \u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 \u05e9\u05dc \u05d1\u05df \u05de\u05e5 \u05d6"\u05dc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11859"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11859"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11918,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11859\/revisions\/11918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manofim.org\/harama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}