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Julie M Gallery, Tel-Aviv
Nadav Assor, Seret, Julie M Gallery, Tel-Aviv, 23.6.11 - 30.7.11.
Yet just as it seems that Assor has
conquered the gaze entirely and mastered the
skills of looking completely, his Cut Stories
disclose the looks of many other gazers whose
conversations circle him, us, and each other.
Amidst his eye’s attempts to dethrone the
gaze, Assor nevertheless allows other eyes
and lips to partially yet freely participate in the
video’s construction. Seated in front of
cameras, they expose and externalize crises
and recoveries, verbalizing an accident they
had conducted or experienced. Then, standing
up, they also film this event and thus demand
their place as active participants behind the
scenes. On the one hand, under Assor’s
command, their stories are deprived of them
and their language ceases to be their own: it
leaves them and returns, precedes their bodily
performances or appears belatedly.
Simultaneously, however, Assor’s attempt to
construct systems of fragmented sequences is
cracked and contested at several elusive
moments that function as the work’s crucial
punctum: eyes that squinted anxiously, as she
was unaware of the camera that just hit her
cheek; eyes that burst in laughter as she was
hearing the painful story of another; eyes that
lay softly on your face for years, until that day
she had suddenly left, and still, they haunt your
images now as before.
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