After 12 comes 1

Yonatan Vinitsky, ‘After 12 comes 1’, Braverman Gallery, opening: Thursday, February 4th, 2016

curated by: Adi Gura

4.2.2016-17.3.2016

Braverman Gallery is pleased to invite you to ‘After 12 comes 1’, a new solo exhibition by Yonatan Vinitsky.

One morning Toad sat in bed.
“I have many things to do,” he said.
“I will write them
all down on a list
so I can remember them.”
Toad wrote on a piece of paper:
A list of things to do today. (1)

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Enter/ press a switch/ go out onto the balcony/ look around/ go back inside/ press the switch again/ bump into a chair/ go up the stairs/ straighten the picture and follow the color.

“The paintings before you are a sum of numerous and different visual impressions. Yet the moment they find their place on the canvas they ‘forget’ their original aspect and their thematic hallmarks, and become the terms of painting – shades and shapes that together form a mosaic made

from fragments of stains,” said the painter Chaim Kiewe. (2) Yonatan Vinitsky presents viewers with works that are the sum of many different impressions, all sharing an original trait – tracing an existing source and deciphering decision-making processes. However, it seems that in his latest works the trodden path meanders thus inviting more expressions and twists than was possible to predict: things that were not on the list suddenly appear.

The current exhibition culminates a string of solo exhibitions Vinitsky held in the past two years, in which his preoccupation with the notion of scale and sculptural concerns was embodied in series of paintings, sculptures and photography, using materials such as wood, iron, fabric, elastic and paint. These works evoked thoughts about positioning objects in space and the creation of a center of gravity. Here, new relations are formed between each individual work, between the body of works and the space, and between the works, the space and the viewer: first Vinitsky dispersed the works in the space laterally, directing viewers’ movements and emphasizing the relation between the two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality of the objects. Later on the installation included free-standing works hanging from the ceiling. Those “float” or alternatively “freeze” in a way that challenges the perception of weight and gravity in the space. The current exhibition brings two new pieces, Sortie Définitive III and Sortie Définitive IV, which continue the recent body of work that was shown in Brussels in 2015.

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The first balconies in the series were based on a typical Parisian model. One of the balconies in the present exhibition is modeled on a specific type of balcony seen in Tel Aviv, whereas the second balcony is a hybrid of the Parisian and Tel Aviv balconies. The decision to use elastic cords to connect the balconies together and to detach them from both their foundations and side walls – suspending them like a mobile between ceiling and floor – allows reflection on their purpose in relation to space and the viewer as well as their status as buffers between inside and outside. They can be internal places from which to look outside and also external spaces that are seen from outside. Each of these acts has various meanings that have changed over history. The local balcony has also seen many transformations since the stone structures of Ottoman Empire buildings, through eclectic architecture and the minimalistic versions of the International Style, public housing and balconies closed with plastic shutters that were a standard feature on building facades for a number of decades.

Considering the balcony metaphorically, it serves as a key to the exhibition, an examination of melting points between domestic and industrial spaces, exterior and interior, and enlarged scales and 1:1 ratio. Next, on the gallery’s left wall, a new work, entitled like the exhibition, comprising two parts: a huge billboard adhesive print, its image taken

from an advertisement of switches manufactured by the electronic company Nisko, which seems momentarily, at this scale, similar to a building façade, and another print, framed and in a 1:1 scale, of the actual switches. The original advertisement image has been scanned, printed, mounted on a colorful printed background, hand-cut, and rescanned. The enlargement allows following these handmade processes and procedures.

A new series of paintings continues the wonderland effect of Vinitsky’s exhibition Soundless Interpretation 1-4 (The person who gives a sign of life is not dead), testing not only scale ratios but also the source and its specific temporality. Starting with a technique Vinitsky has been working with in recent years – back-painting on archival transparent polyester sheets (Mylar) – the first layer is in fact also the last in the coloring process order. The first painting is an enlarged version of the original; the second is a rotated version of the first painting and also includes a color inversion; the third is an overturn of the second painting; and the fourth is an overturn of the first painting. In addition to the formal attraction Vinitsky has to the painting of Willys da Castro (1926-1988) that is at the center of this series, the painting is reminiscent of Vinitsky’s earlier works in which he traced abstract painters. It can be assumed that the title of the 1953 work, Estudo para pintura (study for a painting) also played a part in Vinitsky’s dialogue with the Brazilian artist. As a series, the four paintings create a new pattern, similar to patterns on fabrics and carpets.

The exhibition has an architectural inclination and slight humor hinted at in the two elastic works. These belong to the genre of comic drawing and refer to one particular small framed drawing the artist encountered at the Bauhaus masters’ house on a visit to Dessau in 2013, and which is among the few impressions incorporated in Vinitsky’s work thus far.

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After 12 comes 1, is a truism, an accepted postulation, a convention of time and a structure of the analogue clock. After 12 comes 1, is an assurance that provides security to some (even a stopped clock is right twice a day) and acts as a trap for others.

The statement “after 12 comes 1” creates a moment of tension or expectation, pause and reflection – what happens in the in-between? Is this window of time different from any other hour of the day? Is it because it is not obvious? And actually, why does 1 come after 12?

In contrast to previous exhibitions, in which the clock was present as an object, as a work in itself or as part of a work, the current exhibition is structured cyclically. The space is defined by one element that traces another and pushes it forward. The clock dictates a certain imagined and subjective rhythm (tick tock) to the movement in the exhibition space and to the unpredictable potential choreography of its various elements.

Ellie Armon Azoulay, Paris, winter 2016

Yonatan Vinitsky (B. 1980, Israel) Lives and works in Paris, FR.
Vinitsky gained his BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College (2006) and his MA Sculpture at Royal College of Art (2009). In the years 2013-14, he attended the Pavilion Residency, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR.

Recent solo exhibitions include Mon Cheri, Brussels, BL; Frutta, Rome, IT (both 2015); Limoncello, London, UK (2014); In 2011 Vinitsky presented his first museum exhibition at the Ashdod Museum of Art, IL (The Cruel King, curated by: Yona Fischer). Recent group exhibitions include Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, IL; Lisa Cooley, New York, US; BeatTricks, Milan, IT; OUTPOST, Norwich, UK (2015); Jeanine Hofland, Amsterdam, NL; Kunstverein Wiesbaden, DE; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (all 2014); Specta, Copenhagen, DK; Czarna Galeria, Warsaw, PL; V22, London, UK (all 2013); Cafe Gallery, London, UK (2012); Annet Gelink, Amsterdam, NL (2011); SALTS, Basel, CH; Limoncello, London, UK; Vulpes Vulpes, London, UK (all 2010). Vinitsky is the recipient of Isracard Prize for young Israeli Artist,Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2013 and the Young artist Award, Minister of culture, 2014. In the years 2013, 2015, Vinitsky received grants for projects from the Israeli Lottery Arts Fund Mifal HaPais.

Beer on opening night courtecy of Shapira Beer

1. Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad Together, Harper & Row, 1971

2. Chaim Kiewe (1912, Germany – 1983, Israel) in conversation with Haim Gamzu, exhibition catalogue, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1974.