It is easy to follow the structural and formal genesis of the installation ‘The Web’ from the painting oeuvre of the Israeli artist Tamar Dobrovsky. From the critic’s neutral point of view, the transition has been spontaneously performed through just a few steps.
Dobrovsky’s paintings hold the best from abstract expressionism: powerful colours, expressive gesture and ritual intensity of performance. The notorious Pollock’s dance around the canvas captured on film and presented on his retrospective at Tate Gallery last year, hypnotized public more than his paintings. It appeared that the images of the process of creation have greater impact than famous paintings. I had the opportunity to see the video recording of Tamar Dubrovsky’s attack on a clean canvas. The process is decisive, powerful, non-hesitant. The aestetics of Dobrovsky was obviously formed during a period when Action painting was the dominant influence within the art of painting and she used it to develop a personal artistic credo. The result surely provides the means for a solid living standard, but she chose to move on further.
The continuing repetition of her painting ritual yielded two important elements for our reconstruction of the genesis of Dobrovsky’s installations. Her painting procedure itself lead to accumulation of pigments into considerable protuberants which are a literal physical invasion of the third dimension. The maniristic repetition of her intersecting brush strokes had organized the composition or its parts into some sort of nets of emphasized spatiality, that through time emancipated into a dominant motif of Tamar’s paintings. Although till today her painting works remain vivid in colours, her later phase develops a monochrome drawing oeuvre where the intersecting structure is finally fully revealed. All the prerequisites were fullfiled for the solution of the only problem left: conquering of space beyond picture.
It is not possible to determine the exact moment when this idea finally set out into realization and the following reconstruction is based on author’s statement. Developed within a traditional media, Tamar choose the blank paper for the carrier of transition into a new artistic discipline. She selected a very fine, but solid paper that is in everyday life used by the Israeli fruit companies for wrapping oranges. It turned out to be the most suitable material for the energetic hand shriveling that, with the addition of glue, shapes it into a firm, light, 40cm long rollers. Thousand of such hand-made forms, became a basic constructive element of her installations. They are 3D replicas of Tamar’s brush strokes as the overall structure of installation is to the composition of her painting. The elements are intersecting, fastened with plastic binders into titanic web-like objects, that hanging from the ceilings of exhibition halls tend to completely devour the space. The structure proved as maximally flexible. Its lightness enables it to be hanged against any surface while the compressed elasticity of paper elements allows simple expansion into space. Till today, the installation was succesfully set up in spaces few hundreds cubic meters large or few stories high. The emphasized organic aspect of elements, as well as the flexibility of construction, bestows the installation the ominous appearance of an exuberant tissue.
From Series, acrylic/ paper, 1999
A new challenge for the author paradoxically came from a compact, rather small space of the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery. Although, until this moment, nine days before the exhibition I still do not know the exact appearance of the installation, Dobrovsky’s creative reaction to the space resulted with a proposal of placing the mirror on the floor of the Gallery. Apart from optical enlargement of the Gallery, the installation will be reflected in a mirror for the first time. The installment should create the always intriguing and multi-significant interaction of the object with its reflection.
While contemplating the installation on its present location the level of its interpretation is reached. It is significant that with every new installment, the installation changes its name: ‘Tangle’ was the title for Musrara Art Center, Jerusalem, 1998; and ‘Adding and Subtracting’ for HaMumeh, Alternative Space, Tel Aviv, 1999. Although it seems that these titles clearly evolve from the physical structure of the installation, they can be read as a reflection, reaction or a commentary of the mildly put a complex reality of Israel.
While we were deciding on the title for Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, I was primarily guided by the physical level of the exhibition, because it would be too easy to draw a parallel with our current social aspect. The title ‘Web’ was chosen apart from its obvious structural reasons, also because the concept of the web is one of the key terms of present times. It presumes the interaction of the parts that through the active correlation establish the whole as the new quality. It is not only about the sphere of informatics, but also about prevailing contemporary concepts that perceive the whole reality as the organic development of the structures to their consume.
Maybe the example of Tamar Dubrovsky offers the answer that is not directly connected to her work, but includes its genesis, a point with which this foreword commenced. Regardless the clear structural principle that unites all segments of the oeuvre, its interpretative potential on paintings and drawings is never questioned. The formal aspects of Tamar’s painting were preponderant. Once the same structural principle from the traditional media was transponded into an installation, it automatically indicates towards the context of the work. Could there be an answer to the question why a large number of artists is no longer satisfied with the traditional, but turns to the new media? It is not just a matter of trend, for which they have often been accused of. Both the audience and artists expect more from the work of art than a single-meaning aesthetic impression. Disciplines like the art of installation, evolved within or because of that cultural attitude -with their very framework impose multi- significance to the artists and the public. Communication becomes multi-leveled; layers are entwined, intersected with an utterly uncertain and therefore exciting complex for all.
Branko Franceschi
