Artissima
3 - 5 November 2017, 12 to 8 pm
Stand Number: Green 16
Vernissage (upon invitation): 2 November 2017

Podbielski Contemporary, Berlin
presenting
YUVAL YAIRI

featuring
AGNESE PURGATORIO | Premio Anima Award winning artist


To contact our gallery please call
Pierre André Podbielski
0039-338 2381720 pierreandre@podbielskicontemporary.com

Yuval Yairi | Surveyor

In his current works, Yuval Yairi (*1961, Israel) adopts the figure of the “surveyor” as an alter-ego, a partner for looking out at the place in which he lives, and for introspection and personal soul searching, trying to come to terms with certain chapters in his past.
The surveyor’s role, which Yairi has performed for years as an aerial scout in the army, has left a deep and traumatic imprint on him, to the point of a split into two personas: the artist and the surveyor.
From the surveyor’s perspective, the mountain, the trail, the valley, and the terrain, are sites to be detected and delimited on a grid of latitude and longitude lines. The surveyor encapsulates the site and the landscape, replacing them with a codified set of fixed signs that facilitate orientation. The surveyor’s view soars to the heights, way above the terrestrial scale, a bird’s eye view that looks down in a way that captures the land far beyond the familiar field of vision available from a standing height. The distance and perspective provide him with power of control. The physical detachment from the ground allows him toperform his task in purportedly clear conscience.
The poetics of Yairi is his artistic ability to use disruption and assembly to create anaccumulative photography of a timeless space. The act of disassembling and assembling a photograph allows Yairi to string together different non-sequential times, events, and places – into a multi-layered moral space. The symbiotic relations between surveyor and artist, the conscious and the subconscious they sometimes stand for, are the motivation for creating the photograph with its stratified components.
The surveyor’s room is full of old measuring tools predating the age of satellite navigation. Devices geared towards what human senses are capable of grasping and perceiving. Upon his return to the terrestrial, he gathers bullets and findings from bloody battles in an empty silent landscape. Back in his room he sorts, photographs, examines, and catalogues his findings.
The pieces presented in this project are the product of the artist’s devoted and laboriousability to sew the quilt of time and place in order to take on the question of identity and of morality. The artist conceals hints and symbols from the surveyor’s world, though uncovering the finding of a sealed and hidden black box.

AGNESE PURGATORIO | Premio Anima Award winning artist
www.animaperilsociale.it/premio_anima/

Agnese Purgatorio has been working on the theme of distance and travel for many years now. She is particularly interested in the image of the forest, both as a fairytale scenario and a real place where migrants often find shelter. In her work This Side of Paradise (2016-2017) she fabricates imaginary scenes, full of symbolism and resonant with ancient rituals. By creating a fictitious space, she actives the spectator and prompts him/her to think critically about his/hers surroundings.