Serendipity

Braverman Gallery cordially invites you to the solo exhibition Serendipity by Aharon Ozery. When in 1662 René Descartes described in Traite’ de l’homme the living being as a literally machine and the body as an automaton, he did not imply that the second half of the equation, namely that the machine which could be bestowed with human qualities is a hypothesis worth contemplation. Yet, the idea of the body being a machine led directly towards a new awareness, one which undermined the dichotomies between man and machine. This dichotomy whose sole purpose is to defend that which is human is the source of technophobia tendencies which were described through books like Shelley’s Frankenstein, or films like Metropolis. Those inclinations have a long history culminating in the 19th century Luddites movement which acted against the industrial revolution. Machines are objects of fascination and art’s relation with them ranges from distaste to emphatic observation. Picabia, Duchamp, Tinguely or Max Ernst, are into the mysteries of the mechanical dimension and their attraction is manifested through many works. And does not Constantine Brancusi’s bird have the perfection of a piston? Celebration of Impracticality When Aharon Ozery creates his machines he is well embedded in a long tradition and his peers are the likes of Jean Tinguely and Roxy Paine. He builds machines which are circular, that is, they actually exist in a mythological time-frame and are a reminiscence of the endless movement of the Ouroboros circle. By their circularity they evoke a wealth of associations common to various cultures which touch the idea of cyclic renewal of life and infinity, the concept of eternity and the eternal return. But unlike his predecessors Ozery introduces a new component into his structures for the fact is that Ozery’s machines are a bit mad and they go against the grain. Unlike a normal machine which knows its role and goes to perform it from point A to point B, his machines have no real goal and they delight in their own impracticality. For how else can one understand a giant construct whose sole purpose is to move eggs from one point to the other in a circular and serene movement, or to grasp an ellipsoid metal construct whose aim is to let two paper boats sail one after the other, serendipitously meeting as if in a moment of revelation. Indeed those machines are almost rebellious in the way they contradict their raison d’etre, and immersed in the irony they built. It is tempting to view them as metaphors of resistance against a capitalist world view which seeks growth, progress, practicability and profit. In their serene and slow appearances they refuse matters of potentiality and fulfillment and celebrate the very opposite of that which a machine is supposed to do. They represent the very opposite ideology their species was supposed to represent for they built a contemplative space, where matters of poetical substance are valued and cherished and this makes them a source of immense beauty. Text by: Doreet Levitte Harten

Aharon Ozery (b.1971, lives and works in Berlin) is a sculpture and installation artist. Aharon holds an Art degree from Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. He has held exhibitions at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv, and participated in group exhibitions at Herzlya Museum of Art in Israel, Beit Manni in Tel Aviv and Kreis & Gutersloh, Germany. Aharon has been awarded the Artist – Teacher Scholarship – Ministry of Education of Israel, The Ministry of Culture “Young Artist” Prize, and The “Kunstlerhaus Bethanien residency”, Berlin.

Opens: Friday, April 27th 2012, 12pm