ARTWORKS IN THE SHOW
On view:
Sep 03rd – Oct 20th, 2020
Dvir / Brussels
EXHIBITION VIEWS
ARTWORKS IN THE SHOW
Mircea Cantor, Latifa Echakhch, Simon Fujiwara, Ariel Schlesinger, Naama Tsabar
Opening date: April 5, 2019
Closing date: April 7, 2019
Milano
On view:
May 30th – Aug 15th, 2020
Brussels
EXHIBITION VIEWS
ARTWORKS IN THE SHOW
SELECTED WORKS
The Novel Je me Souviens is an ode to life: the ordinary, the extraordinary, the trivial and the crucial. Pleasure of remembering moments lived, experiences had, stories heard, facts learned, secrets overheard, encounters shared is the true subject of this exhibition. Paul Aster said that ‘to read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play’.
Dvir Gallery invites you to take a leap to this spirit with us and share with us via e-mail your own memories after Perec’s lead.
Please find some of the memories of our viewers below the images.
« I remember that Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian are the patron saints of shoe-makers. »
« I remember pink dress shirts. And bola ties. »
« I remember when polio was the worst thing in the world. »
« I remember that Stendhal liked spinach. »
« I remember when a kid told me that those sour clover-like leaves we used to eat (with little yellow flowers) tasted so sour because dogs peed on them. »
« I remember beard tennis: you counted the number of beards you spotted in the street: 15 for the first, 30 for the second, 40 for the third, and “game” for the fourth. »
fragments from Je me souviens by Georges Perec, 1978
ARTWORKS
« I remember my kindergarten teacher Shula cleaning me after a food-fight telling me ‘you are a savage that’s what you are’. »
− Yotam Intrator
« I remember wanting to be as tall as my father. »
− Aleksandra Bikont
« I remember my first piano lesson with this Russian teacher. I was five. »
− Shifra Shalit
« I remember all names of my book heroes and not of my school mates. »
− Anna Bikont
« Je me souviens de la première exposition de Douglas Gordon à la galerie Dvir à Tel Aviv, c’était en 1998 je crois… Aujourd’hui j’ai dans ma collection l’ensemble des oeuvres de cette exposition: text wall et vidéos. »
− Philippe Cohen
« I remember seeing a business man getting his necktie swallowed by a ticket machine in Washington DC’s subway. »
− Chaya Hazan
« I remember that as a child I really enjoyed blackouts. »
− Ron Arad
« Je me souviens de ma rencontre avec Maria Calas chez mes parents au Mali. »
− Simona
« I REMEMBER THE SMELL OF A BULLET PASSING ABOVE MY HEAD. I was 12. »
− Maya Shmailov
« Je me souviens de caresses dans les cheveux qui semblaient suspendre l’infinité du temps. »
− Denis Gardarin
« I remember my first attempts in composing letters, the excitement in deciphering the signs in the streets or titles in my parents’ newspaper. »
− Nehama Burak
« Je me souviens de cette tempête au large du Cap Finisterre qui nous faisait douter d’accoster un jour à Madère. »
− Pierre Boucher
« Je me souviens des carnets avec les numéros de téléphone que je relisais.
Je me souviens de déambulations dans Paris.
Je me souviens d’endroits où je ne suis pas allée et de moments que je n’ai pas vécus.
Je me souviens de mes rêves de liberté.
Je me souviens des gens que j’ai eu la chance de croiser même sur de minuscules périodes.
Je me souviens de certaines de mes lectures et relectures.
Je me souviens de nos disparus même ceux que je n’ai pas connus.
Je me souviens des cartes postales qu’on envoyait.
Je me souviens de moments de peau à peau avec mes enfants.
Je me souviens de leurs odeurs.
Je me souviens de confidences partagées.
Je me souviens du regard de douceur de mon amie Judith et de l’infinie tendresse de ma grand-mère.
Je me souviens d’images imprécises.
Je me souviens d’un autre siècle.
Je me souviens d’images certainement idéalisées.
Je me souviens d’histoires d’amour douloureuses.
Je me souviens de larmes de désespoir.
Je me souviens de moments d’amour comme des moments de plénitude.
Je me souviens d’aventures humaines magiques.
Je me souviens des yeux qui m’ont regardée.
Je me souviens de conversations échangées comme de musiques que j’aimais à l’oreille.
Je me souviens d’envies d’ailleurs.
Je me souviens de blessures inguérissables.
Je me souviens d’errances.
Je me souviens de lectures qui m’ont apaisées ou transcendées.
Je me souviens de peintures dans lesquelles j’ai plongé.
Je me souviens d’expositions qui m’ont nourrie.
Je me souviens de rencontres fortes avec le travail de certains artistes.
Je me souviens de passions et d’enthousiasme qu’elles ont pu déclencher.
Je me souviens d’interrogations qu’elles ont suscitées.
Je me souviens de longues périodes de rêverie. »
− Edwige Benamou
« I remember my regular visits to the Zoo in Tel Aviv (Shderot Keren Kayement) very young age 3-4 with my Polish speaking uncle who ran an animal shop at the entrance to the Zoo. »
− Rivka Saker
« I remember the day I left. »
− Paula Karelic
« I remember when I melted. »
− Olivia Hild
« Je me souviens de ne pas oublier d’aimer. »
− Anne Boucher
« Je me souviens du première arbre que j’ai planté. »
− Alexandre Rouhaud
« I remember my first time at the Metropolitan Museum, I was 6 years old and I told my mom that I was not feeling well. She asked me: “what are you feeling?” I answered: “it is too beautiful”. »
− Vivian Gandelsman
« Je me souviens de la sensation de ma main dans celle de mon père à 4 ans. »
− Suzon Ingber
« Je me souviens du soleil sur ma peau, assise à la terrasse d’un café.
Je me souviens du temps où embrasser nos amis n’avait qu’une question : 2 ou 4 bises.
Je me souviens du bruit de la ville qui berçait mes jours et mes nuits.
Je me souviens des déambulations dans les boutiques sans vraiment vouloir rien acheter.
Je me souviens où tout ceci ne nous faisaient pas peur… »
− Nathalie Elcabas
« I remember the moment you fell asleep. You left me alone counting the last few minutes. »
− Adi Fluman
« I remember that at the age of eight, our neighbour, the great-grandson of the Rabi of Goor warned me that God is watching me! »
− Edna Mosenson
« Me acuerdo de la emoción que me mantuvo despierta toda la noche luego de experimentar mi primer beso amoroso. Tenía 12 años.. »
− Irene Kronenberg
« I remember getting lost and being fine with it. »
− Darnell Ross
« Je me souviens de tout. »
« I remember everything. »
− Laurent Maillaud
« I remember a squirrel run over so flat that it looked like it was painted on the road. »
− Jenifer Bar Lev
« I remember my mother’s nostrils widening when she returned home after parents teacher meeting. »
− Zeev Tene
« I remember last night, I remember lust. »
− Miri Segal
« I remember holding you for the first time, seeing a tiny-immense infinity in your being, and understanding what endless love truly means. »
− Arie Elbelman Rozental
« I remember I was camping with my father in the south of France, I found 10 francs on the ground. »
− Nelly Agassi
« I remember seeing Jaffa while on my grandmother’s back from the Mediterranean. »
− Dor Guez
« I remember the protests. »
− Ruth Anderwald & Leonhard Grond
« I remember the very first exhibition I went in my life, a Claude Monet show at Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA) in Rio de Janeiro. I loved it so much that I went back many times and in one of these visits I won a prize for being the visitor to break the institution’s public attendance record. »
− Yuri Oliveira
« I remember my first “grown up behavior”: changing my little sister’s diaper.. I was 4 and a half years old. »
− Galila Barzilaï-Hollander
« Je me souviens de mon père m’amenant marcher dans le brouillard un matin, au lieu de me conduire à l’école. »
− Jean-Baptiste Carobolante
« Je me souviens du moment où tous les invités de l’émission de télévision ‘Droit de réponse’ de Michel Polac parlaient en même temps. Je me souviens que cette image me revenait régulièrement à l’esprit au début de ma vie à Berlin où l’un attend patiemment la fin de la phrase de l’autre, jusqu’au point. Je me souviens que cela me gênait horriblement au début, ce silence et ne pas être interrompue. »
− Marie-Blanche Carlier
« I remember my father telling us, when in the top of the mountain, to take a deep breath… and then, to breath out. »
− Gabriella Binia
« I remember my grandmother sweetness, quite often. »
− Arnaud Bozzini
« I remember shaking your hand, a possible new friend. »
− Aviva Neuman
« I remember hugging you. »
− Naama Tsabar
« I remember walking to Brooklyn over the Manhattan bridge during the black out. »
− Sarah Strauss
« I remember the midnight I was lost in Paris and the Metro was already closed, I was 12. (and there were no cellphones back then) »
− Assaf Evron
« I remember a small girl standing at the entrance between two rooms looking at mum and Tzvika dancing. »
− Yudith Levin
« I remember the bathroom in my mother’s workplace, there was a niche I wanted to move into. »
− Orly Sever
« I remember summer time, Soviet Union just before the Perestroika. I am sitting in a full size barrel full with water at my grandparent’s summer house, dacha, cooling myself, feeling wonderful. »
− Rufina Valery Valsky
« Sarajevo, Sarajevo, seher Bosno, volim te… »
Je me souviens de l’été 1993 à Sarajevo : la caméra de Benjamin Filipovic, le sourire de Redina, sa femme et de Mak leur fils ; le Nikon de Milomir Kovacevic, « Strasni » fixant sur la pellicule les visages et les pierres ; le fusain de Seyo-Sead Cizmic glissant sur le papier, la voix de Gertruda Munitic, les doigts courant sur les cordes d’un violoncelle, les rires des Nadrealisti ; les yeux des enfants de l’institut d’éducation spécialisée… le parfum, le vacarme silencieux de la guerre.
« Que sont mes amis devenus / Que j’avais de si près tenus / Et tant aimés / Ils ont été trop clairsemés / Je crois le vent les a ôtés / L’amour est morte /… / Pauvre sens et pauvre mémoire » (Rutebeuf, 1230-1285)
− Philippe Tanguy
« I remember a penalty, not particularly difficult I jumped to the right corner but I was a second too late and I felt the ball gently slipping under my body. »
− Dvir Intrator
« I remember the winds over the Strait of Gibraltar. »
− Ruth Marques
« I remember the taste of the corn boiled by my grandmother. It tasted diamond. »
− Mircea Cantor
« I remember reading the Diary of Eva Heyman to my children in March 2020. And I said to myself we are still living in paradisiaque times. »
− Mircea Cantor
« I still remember the first time… »
− Jonathan Monk
« I remember my visit to Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul; A real memory of an actual event and a concrete place, where I was completely immersed in the physical memorabilia of a character that never existed, collected by another character that never existed in order to remember events that never took place. »
− Tchelet Semel
« I remember that when I was a child I loved to read. Not only children’s books also for grownups. My father didn’t believe that I actually read and understood them. He used to test me on them, trying to see if I really remember what was in the book. I did. He was filled with pride and amazement. To this day I remember well all sort of unimportant facts. Dates, names, battles from History. It’s not important at all today in the Google era but it’s important to my father. My father loves Trivia. He loves things that you can measure. It relaxes him. Every couple of nights he calls or txts me with a Trivia question. “Who was Churchill’s foreign minister during the second world war?” He doesn’t think about checking Google, or maybe he does, and he just acts like he doesn’t. It makes him happy that I know. It fills him with pride. And I, almost 40 years old now, I still want my father to be proud of me. To be happy. So, I remember. And if I don’t remember I check on Google and act as if I remember and then I remember that same feeling of pride from my childhood, and that, is the memory from which all other memories come. »
− Yonatan Esterkin
« I remember the night after seeing Jeanne Moreau walking in Elevator to the Gallows. »
− Yana Rotner
« I remember sailing leaf boats with stone people in the river I made in my grandparents yard. »
« I remember my first kiss with you. »
− Elham Rokni
« … I just remembered today when I put down an electric drilling machine on my oldest sister’s newly put in ‘wall to wall carpeting’ in 1976 – the drill had not completely stopped and subsequently pulled up the carpet and made a huge hole… I felt so bad… »
− David Neuman
« À l’approche de Pâques, je me souviens de ma première vision de la barbarie dont l’homme était capable, le regard d’un enfant de huit ans. J’ai passé les vacances de Pâques dans la région de Gand avec ma grand-mère paternelle que j’adorais. Chaque matin, surtout pendant cette période où les œufs occupaient beaucoup nos pensées, je disais bonjour à nos poules et voyais si elles nous avaient gentiment donné des œufs. Un matin, en regardant par la fenêtre, j’ai vu une de nos poules courir dans l’allée sans tête et à quelques pas derrière le jardinier la poursuivre. J’appelle ma grand-mère paniquée qui m’explique que c’est normal et que cet acte est nécessaire avant de déplumer puis de cuire le poulet. Après cet incident, j’ai regardé et je me suis méfié du jardinier même s’il essayait de m’adoucir en nous cueillant des fleurs. »
− Geneviève Barriol
A memory inspired by Dor Guez’s Samira, 2020
« I remember my Moroccan grandmother’s soft hands adorned by distinct gold jewellery that seemed to me, as a kid, that it came from another place, another era. She was a Samira in her own right. »
− Ayelet Elstein
« I remember the first snow of the year, which was usually during the night. I remember my mother waking me up and telling me: “Look Gaby, it snowed!”
And me running to the window. Magic. »
− Gabriela Vanga
« I remember deciding not to settle down for a long time. »
− Zuzana Špoutilová
« I remember the taste of sweet tooth paste. »
− Shai-Lee Horodi
« I remember my grand mother throwing candy at me and at the rest of the kids from her window. Our class was visiting the town’s archaeological museum which was located under a poor project building. »
− Noa
« Je me souviens d’un galop sur la plage avec Michka. Nous volions. »
− Fabienne Cymerman
« I remember the tears of George Steiner. That one day, when we went to Chantilly. At first he wondered why I wanted to go, to take him there. In all these years, living in Paris between 1938 and 1940, and then visiting again many times, teaching, lecturing, he had never visited the musée Condé. I reckoned that he might be interested in having a look at the extraordinary library, so I inquired, and it happened. We visited the museum – George was somehow interested. And then we went to the library – a part of the castle that is normally closed to the public. He was shown a few medieval manuscripts, and, after them, an edition of the Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, which had belonged to Montaigne centuries before making its way to the library of the duc d’Aumale. George asked shyly: « Could I hold it in my hands? », « Yes, of course », the curator of the library responded. George was standing next to a window, and it was a sunny day. He held the book to his face, looking at all of Montaigne’s handwritten commentaries on these Commentaries. The light touched his face, and there I saw, under his eye, shining like a diamond, a teardrop. »
− Donatien Grau
« I remember when I lay in bed and my body didn’t have any borders. »
− Joanna Jones
« I remember the giant mosquito being quiet and still on the ceiling and me breathing below, pink red orbs moving in my body as I sat on the chair, whilst Manu Chao was playing distantly through the window, softly in a neighbours apartment – and in my mind, I was imagining what your skin would feel like against mine, purple against green, merging together into something new. »
− Sivan Lavie
« I remember what I forgot. »
− Els Vermang
« I remember forgetting you. »
− Sam Steverlynck
« I remember Pierre Huyghe’s ‘After Life Ahead’ @ the 2017 Skulptur Projekte in Münster, a unique artistic experience, a deep break with everything I had known in art until then. »
− Ami Barak
« I remember traffic jams.
Motor boys and girls with tans
Nearly-was and almost-rans
I remember this
History is made
History is made to seem unfair »
− Omer Fast
R.E.M. (‘I remember California)
− Thomas Hirschhorn
« I remember when ‘Atlas’ chewing-gum at ten cents was a dream coming true. »
− Noa
« I remember the paths between Dganya and Kineret. »
− Ofra Tene
« I remember the thoughts of Virgil at the port of Brundisium. »
− Lior Gal
« I remember every single moment I fell under the spell of a piece of art or music; that precious moment when my inner coordinate system is luminous. »
− Kira Marina Von Bismarck
« Je me souviens… de pas grand chose en fait. Sans doute à cause de ce drôle de moment du temps où nous sommes tous, tellement, tellement avec nous-mêmes que nous en sommes asphyxiés. Trop de nous. J’ai beau chercher depuis des jours, je ne me souviens de rien. La seule chose qui vient c’est ce très lointain souvenir, un des tous premiers, ce moment particulier, enfant, dans une école catholique St-Roch rue St Roch près des Tuileries qui acceptait dans les années 60 en cours d’année les petits juifs d’Algérie. Je me souviens avoir appris le signe de croix et le refaire ouaté sous la table du vendredi soir. Je me souviens être allée à la messe ? Pas si sûr, mais avoir demandé si Jeanne d’Arc était juive, oui, ça oui. Peut-être l’était-elle ? Je me souviens de cela car nous sommes plusieurs milliards d’individus aujourd’hui à être dans le brouillard et que nous cherchons (où nous nous accrochons) à des signes. Ce même brouillard m’entoure souvent en Israel ou je ne comprends pas toute la langue, ou je suis dans la ouate ou disons du houmous, je me souviens de cela parce qu’on peut toujours être presque asphyxié et respirer quand même, doucement. »
− Valérie Abecassis
« I remember the first time I saw BatSheva dance company performing “Echad Mi Yodea” by Ohad Naharin. I fell in love. »
− Nehama Karpol-Burak
« I remember wanting to be impenetrable. Je me souviens le tube du dentifrice chez mes parents. »
− Suzy Shammah
« I remember the sun. »
− Federico Acal
« I remember us in 1976, December, in Yosemite Park, California, saving a squirrel from an eagle that attacked it, and wondering years after, did we do the right thing, to interfere with nature? »
« I remember us, left alone on the lawn, while everybody else went back to class, the bell rang to say break is over. we were almost 18 and I wasn’t at all prepared for that, why did I stay outside? You said: let’s go, and I followed you to the nearby wood as if under a spell. Lately I told you how I regret the wasted years before this. »
− Irit Braude
Miroslaw Balka & Latifa Echakhch
Opening date: May 25th 2018
Closing date: May 27th, 2018
Dvir Gallery @ Micheline Szwacjer
On the occasion of the Antwerp Art Weekend 2018, Dvir Gallery is pleased to present a show by Latifa Echakhch and Miroslaw Balka at Micheline Szwajcer Gallery.
The practice of both artists ranges from delicate small objects to large scale installations. Departing from a personal point of reference they both create a poetic fragility between material and personal history.
Latifa Echakhch utilises absence as a constructive element within her work, conceiving the lack of something as a place of creation. She invites the viewer to reflect on the rigidity and contradictions of society through objects loaded with symbolic, politic and poetic meanings.
Reflecting on the traits and stories of life, our culture, and its imprints on our way of being, the Nova series evokes an ambivalence of meaning between their original functions and their subsequent delicacy in a decomposed state. Latifa puts forward a contrast in materiality and functionality, wherein the object she uses becomes the holder of its own fragility, unveiling the limits of human strength and durability.
Miroslaw Balka’s art focused around the centrally placed man and the way he experiences the world. Since the 1980s he has been coming back to the subject of the human body, its physical and symbolic presence: physiology, vulnerability, and traces. Balka’a oeuvre from the very first moments until today. It is an inventory of basic forms, materials and references. By the same token it grasps the moment of passing from figurative sculpture to reduced, abstract forms, reveals the symbolism of their dimensions, proportions, and materials that he used, such as wood, concrete, gypsum and more metaphoric ones: salt, soap, and ash.
The piece shown at Micheline Szwajcer Gallery is rather a redaction of substances, showcasing, a series of drawings created through an accident fire of his studio in 1993 from which impression thoughts emerged to become pieces of art.
« Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time. »
ARTWORKS
