Decreation

Braverman Gallery is pleased to present, Decreation, Ofri Cnaani’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition includes ink on Mylar drawings and video installations, which reflect a continuation of the artist’s inquiry into the interactions between body, space, architecture and narrative. The title of this show, Decreation, inspired by the work of writer Anne Carson, speaks to the real or surreal possibility of undoing of the self/creation.

Presenting a series of claustrophobic architectures, Cnaani’s ink on Mylar drawings expand her past interest in the erotic dimensions of combat and occupation and present scenes of hunting and devouring that have been camouflaged within civilized social codes. The works presents interiors that do not serve as a protective spaces but, rather, as an arena for decay, violence, and decadence.

Inside Collision, is a three-channel video presented two small rooms, which are divided by one wall and serve as both shelter and prison. In the first room, two performers wearing wolf masks, in the second room, two performers holding deer horns. While the dynamic among each couple attracts the viewer’s attention, her focus slowly shifts to the center wall, where one ‘wolf’ and one ‘deer’ are attracted to the same wall from opposite sides. This fatal attraction develops into a dangerous dynamic that speaks to our magnetism to the other and fear of our enemies.

The video Casting for the Ark presents a small aristocratic living room. One after another, couples enter the room and each of them performs a different animal-like posture taken form Yoga practice. The group follows an inner spatial and social code that soon collapses due to the lack of space, creating physical and psychological imbalance. Both the title and the sound track refer to a sense of an outside catastrophe that becomes more and more apparent as the non-narrative video progresses.

Eres is a site specific video installation conceived especially for the gallery‘s fa#35231;ade. The work will be screened only during nigh-time. Shot from above but projected on the storefront’s floor, the video takes place in the liminal space between the street level and the gallery’s indoor space. One moving image situates a woman with feathery eagle wings between a steep red brick wall and a deserted ground underneath it. The ‘eagle’ attaches to the wall trying to hide from a bright spotlight that comes searching from above, exposing the feathery animal as if it was a hunting moment or a theatrical arena. The glowing light of the full moon on the second fa#35231;ade window, mirrors the flashlight as the ‘other’ restless and penetrating moon.