URI TZAIG - VIDEO WORKS

Saturday 9th June - 21st July 2002

Uri Tzaig is an astute and playful artist whose deceptively simple observational work and often rhythmically elaborate editing is infused with a sense of wonder. Tzaig's medium is video, this is the first major solo show of recent and newly commissioned work in Ireland.
This exhibition will also see the fourth in a sequence of unique limited edition calendars using the structure of time and space throughout different cultures. The work is panoramic and partially luminous, it is based on the Hebrew (moon) and Celtic (sun) calendars. It is a gift to the audience created by Tzaig to mark the occasion. *

The 4 projected video works:

ALLA ACBAR - (2001)
"This 7.5 minute long video functions as a mantra for the beauty of nature and different ways we construct it in form and meaning. The images are taken from the Israeli landscape, all within 40 minutes of my house: olive trees, orange trees, green fields under the rain etc. Isn't the original essence of life to embrace God and celebrate the beauty of life?"
(Uri Tzaig 2000)

Crystal
Tzaig uses identical twins in this hypnotic film screened as a circular projection on the floor. In this work the world is seen turning, representing the revolution of the universe or the mythic cycles anterior and exterior to any historical time - the evocation of an archaic experience of time is a kind of wishful thinking folded into Tzaig's work. In crystal the two sets of identical twins celebrating youth against the background of the dead sea could serve as a commercial for the tourist industry.

Doors
The images of two revolving doors in perpetual motion create the sense of a Non-existent place, where people are passing from nowhere to nowhere. There is also the presence of an animated bee with it's own rhythm and direction that emphasis the question: who is more real, the people filmed by the camera or the digital bee? All together they work a sort of turbine engine creating a constant revolving current.

Infinity
Uri Tzaig invites dancers from the Montpellier City Center for Dance to play a game. In this game there is no referee, there are two mixed teams (men and women) wearing the same red clothes, the field is constantly shrinking and expanding making the players re-examine their relationship to the space. From time to time one of the players pastes a coloured sticker on his/her body while time continues to vanish without mercy and the ball moves from one to another without ever having the rules of the game explained.