Story Slam | Group Exhibition
Story Slam
Group Exhibition | Kishon Gallery
1.3.11 – 4.4.11
What is Your Story?
“All classes, all human groups, have their narratives, enjoyment of which is very often shared by men with different, even opposing, cultural backgrounds… narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.”
Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (1977:79)
Based on the universal human need for narratives and stories to process our own experiences and to elaborate new concepts, Story Slam aspires to examine the connection between image, text and the narrative created out of the complex relations between them: What story, one of many, an image can tell us?
Let us consider an artwork: it is an abstract idea traansformed into a physical object. Fragments of messages, pieces of sentences and an assortment of words – a literal vision is translated into a visual article through a long term practical process. The outcome is an image, necessarily holds a story within it. But what is the nature of that story? Is there only one story? And if so, who produces it? Is it the artist? The viewer? Maybe both?
“Something is definitely going on there”, the viewer will surely think to himself while watching Keren Shpilsher’s drawing Little Red Riding Hood, Hinda Weiss’ photograph Brother and Sister, or Avraham Simchi’s paint Nelson Nelson. Without a shadow of a doubt, each and every one of the artworks in Story Slam treasures an occurrence, and it is the viewer’s business to narrate it.
As the quote above establishes, the power of the narrative is that it is everywhere and open for everyone. This aspect is extremely explicit in Story Slam. Whereas the artist desires to convey a certain narrative or narratives, the viewer, aloof, interprets the image that is in front of his eyes according to his own personal background (whether sociological, cultural etc) and unique life experiences so as accumulative knowledge. The story, therefore, is born out of this one time interaction between a viewer, a work of art and inner-linkages it sustains with other exhibited artworks.
In that manner, this exhibition turns the tables; Being if they are the words of someone else, a poem, a citation, or otherwise: a thread of thoughts articulated by the artist himself – each artist was asked to accompany the artwork with a written text. This coerced simple act actually led all artists, consciously or not, to open a small window – a peephole into their soul – and to reveal intimate aspects of their own personal narrative. By doing so, those artists taking part in this exhibition allow the spectator to adopt a certain narrative – one that is offered by that given combination of visual and textual. If the viewer chooses to do so or not, is yet a different story.
From classic oil on canvas to street art techniques on a found frame; from figurative to complete abstract; from the explicit to the implicit – Story Slam exhibition is very diverse. It includes painting, drawing and photography by experienced and established artists alongside recently graduated emerging ones as well as by longtime Israeli residents alongside new immigrants. Together they create a colorful heterogeneous assemblage, representing the story of this place. Tel Aviv, Israel, 2011.
The participating artists are:
Rimma Arslanov, Naama Cappon, Gili Cohen, Mali De-Kalo, Oum Kultuv, Ilya Medvedev, Roy Mordechay, Michal Orgil, Michel Platnic, Naama Rabinerson, Ayelet Riza-Doron, Keren Shpilsher, Arvraham Simchi, Noa Tavori, Arnon Tousia-Cohen, Hinda Weiss, Natalia Zourabova.
