Moshe Ninio: A Turkish rug and a trick of the eye

Step into the darkened Project Room 1 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and you’ll see a rectangular mirror in the middle of the floor. A hologram image flickers above the rectangle as you walk around it, becoming clear only if you stand in just the right spot, a few feet from the center of the room. There, a rainbow of light echoes the shape and texture of a classic antique Turkish rug.

 

“Rainbow: Rug,” which is nearly 6 feet long, is the work of the Israeli artist Moshe Ninio. This exhibition, which continues through April 18 at the Bergamot Station-based museum, is Ninio’s first solo show on the West Coast, and it contains only the single piece. But this ephemeral “rug” stands out, created with technology that is both costly and already archaic, using lasers emanating from the gallery’s ceiling to etch out the image in space. “The hologram appears as a pleasant spectrum,” Ninio said during an interview over coffee at Woodcat, a cafe in Echo Park. “It becomes like a horizon which you can traverse, and the rainbow appears but can’t be reached. As a child, you want to go to the rainbow, but it evades you.”

 

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