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Places 2010

Places
 

solo exhibition at Gal-on Gallery, Tel Aviv
A photo exhibition presenting Yoram Vidal’s work at the “Gal – On” Gallery
in Tel Aviv.

 

Vidal makes a variety of looks directed to different places within the Israeli public sphere. Sometimes it is clearly identifiable in the landscape and often esoteric objects character and appearance of universal.
The exhibition highlights the position of the subject and invites the viewer
to a series of meetings with a spiritual connection / magical object of a
photographer with Photo.
The Pictures bound and blur the relationship between sacred and profane, between subject and object and the question of location becomes negligible in the face of the establishment "Place” in its deepest meaning.
When the children of Israel wandered in the desert, they took with them for the temporary, holy place, a type of portable temple but completely defined. The ability to distinguish between sacred and profane was made possible by the existence of this object and its location in space.
This action of setting a limit, however distant in space and time context in which it finds itself, counterpart in a thrilling action of photography. The latter defines space by limiting, by the exclusion of what's gone and what is present. It's almost magical moment, in which a new order is established; the inside distinct from outside, the self from the other, the
eternal from the ephemeral.

This collection of photographs in the exhibition, endows the space mystical quality that is very difficult to define, difficult even to decode. Places that appear here soon lose the concrete presence and become a performance, a state of mind, Kind of revelation.
At times it seems that the ensemble of details that make the photograph,
functions at the same time as an unsolved white wall. Vacuum invites us to the process, like when Practicing meditative Zen, Which in a moment, an understanding reaches
us. This clarification is not Dependent on a place; it does not accept external dictates, it is an internal process, spiritual, a projector from the photographer on the object.
There is a premise that a photo, of outer space, will testify something about the place, build a story, but in the set of images created by Vidal the perspective transcends the description. Instead of saying the traditional voting “This, is Here” It says pointing introverted “this is so”. This is a journey from the inside out and back. Years after the death of the subject / author - their voices arose and demand his rights. The works blur the demarcation of the relationship between what we call “objective”, given to us as a religion, and the person who operates the view machinery and establishes the state of mind. The greater the variety of images in the work grows; their secondary physical location or cultural performance is being clarified. Places become the object of projection, visual translation of what cannot be described verbally. They are forced to the same transcendental experience; therefore, one of the most familiar questions among photographers is “Where was this taken?” converts to another question: “Why was this
taken so?”
Delicate fabric woven is created by Vidal, as a collection of insights, the syntax of the photographic sessions is held in a conscious and loaded space, but can be detached from it on their way to the edges, into less plowed fields, into the almost virgin soil sown slowly and painstakingly waiting to crack.

 

Text by Yair Barak, November 2010

© 2023 Yoram Vidal. All rights reserved.

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