Recipient of the 2019 Lauren & Mitchell Presser
Contemporary Art Grant.
Vered Aharonovitch’s solo exhibition centers on a family and their fine house. In a spot of voyeuristic indulgence, we are invited to inspect its dwellers, mechanical figures engaged in intimate pursuits. Over the years, Aharonovitch has incorporated into her work figures based on herself as a young child and on other members of her own family, in unbridled and humorous displays of provocative candidness and compassion. In her research preceding the creation of the work, Aharonovitch looked at a great many mechanical clocks from past centuries, of the sort that use mechanized figures. These would pop out and moved along tracks at predetermined intervals, to the surprise and delight of audiences, while relentlessly marking the passage of time as a memento mori – a sobering reminder of mortality. Not surprisingly, the house she has created works like a large clock: every fifteen minutes, a grotesque and bizarre procession of the family members emerges from the door, for the purpose of emptying the garbage that has accumulated inside. Yet the family members’ desire to maintain order and cleanliness is doomed to fail: in short order, the procession pulls all the garbage back into the house.
Curator: Aya Lurie Read more
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