MAPPA: Yael Davids 1994–2003
15 November 2003 – 25 January 2004
www.depaviljoens.nl
The famed high-tech shelters in which Gerhard Richter’s grey painting series were displayed during the 9th Documenta in Kassel in 1992, are now home to the Museum De Paviljoens, the contemporary art space in the new city of Almere. The pavilions, shaped like railroad-cars, were relocated in 1994 and currently form the backdrop to a retrospective of work by the Dutch-based Israeli artist Yael Davids. Davids has been experimenting with the relationships between the body and inert matter – mostly familiar objects like chairs, tables and mattresses – by creating an interdependency between the two. All of which has resulted in this oddly convincing installation of the works she has developed since 1994.
She invites participants to crawl in,
under, or through the everyday objects, creating somewhat hilarious
conditions as the participants strain to get into position. For where the
objects are of a disarming simplicity, she seems to demand a dexterity and
flexibility from the participants in her installations that is unattainable
to most. In Nobody at Home Chair (1996) she has a naked person curl-up in
the space under a chair, buttocks sticking through the seating, for a
minimum of five minutes. In another work, Aquarium (1997) a person stands
with their head sticking through the bottom of a full glass water tank. As
the water slowly leaks through the opening at the bottom, it eventually
reaches the point at which the person can breathe again (that is if he or
she can hold out that long).
The participant’s physical discomfort becomes palpable and every second this
position endures is as harrowing for the viewer as it must be for the
performer. Davids’ aim is to incorporate the objects into an awareness of
dureé, the French philosopher Henry Bergson’s notion of the consciousness of
time passing. Objects always have a stubbornly defiant aura in relationship
to time, they stand there, inert and oblivious to human consciousness. It is
fascinating, therefore, to see how they are infused with temporal
consciousness as the participants occupy them and take them up into a
maelstrom of human consciousness. It is in this that Davids is most
convincing. Albeit a little silly at the same time.
Siebe Tettero