In 2016 Outset Israel supported the extraordinary photographic installation ‘Towards Post-Urbanism’ by the artist Nir Dvorai, that was presented at the Janco-Dada Museum as part of DADA 100, a project marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Dada movement. This group exhibition examined the Dadaist elements in contemporary Israeli artistic work. Twelve curators were invited to examine the basic principles of the movement and to suggest an artist or group of artists they believe are representative of the Dadaist principles.
The artist Nir Dvorai, invited by the curator Irena Gordon, created an installation that comprised a new photomontage based on countless black-and-white photographs that Dvorai took on Yoseftal Boulevard in Kiryat Ata. This was a gigantic conglomerate attached to the ceiling of the museum facing downward, reflected in a glass mirror of the same size placed on a low platform. Dvorai monitors the urban experience of public housing in Israel. This experience was formed over many years and it still shapes the consciousness of life in Israel.
It encompasses the conflicts at the heart of the history of the Israeli narrative – the spirit of modernism and alienation from what is local, and the beauty and aesthetics of the East and West in contrast to the requirements of everyday life. Dvorai does not make use of a single photograph or a traditional series of photographs but rather uses a hardworking and ongoing process to create photomontages comprising tens of thousands of black and white photographs that he himself takes, cuts out and reconnects.
Dvorai makes virtuoso use of the concepts of collage and photomontage that were the focus of the critical and nihilistic accomplishments of Dada, and suggests a current and disturbing expression of Israeli urbanism alongside a photographic plate based on a continuum of pieces and a demand to expand the medium of photography into a dizzying dance.
ON VIEW: March – May 2016
