One and One, One and Two, One and Three, One and Four

Curator: Adi Gura

A series of sculptural objects, a video work and photographs comprise Tamar Ettun’s first solo show at Braverman Gallery. The main exhibition space will be occupied by a hot-air balloon with a series of instruments made found objects. Ettun wishes that the viewers take part in the experience and play the instruments.

On opening night, the “Acollective” band will perform an improvisational show using the instruments Ettun has created. The performance will take place at 9 pm.
Ettun (b. 1982 in Jerusalem, lives and works in New York) began combining hot-air balloons into her artworks because of their similarity to parachutes. Once she received her MFA from Yale University, Ettun received a travelling fellowship that enables her to travel the US with the aim of researching, testing and get better acquainted with the local hot-air balloon culture. According to Ettun, hot-air balloons are romantic objects, which unlike the functional and often militaristic parachute; symbolize the vast space of possibility. Instead of being a means of transportation, as they were originally designed, within this context the hot-air balloon becomes a formalistic and emotional space. The hot-air balloon, together with the various instruments, examines the performative potential of the object.

A new video-work titled “It’s not a Question of Anxiety” (2014), which has been made especially for this exhibition, shows a series of images that deal with different body parts on changing backgrounds. As in the video-works by Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, a visual structure is built. Ettun combines movement, objects, sound and color and created a choreographed sequence. The music accompanying the video-work is an original arrangement for the Jewish poem titled “Yedid Nefesh”, a poem sung after the Jewish ritual of welcoming the Sabbath. A sense of spirituality accompanies the video and the music serves as a kind of metronome to the movements.