Can Art Magazine - Gallery - Ruth Shomroni at Periscope Gallery

Ruth Shomroni at Periscope Gallery

Thid exhibition was conceived two years ago.
Before the flood, Before the sky dropped on us, before the tower of illusions shattered and left us exposed, orphaned and with jaws dropped.
At the time, Ruth was developing urban structures, imaginary, ornamental and glittering, as protest against the changing (and not for the better) cityscape.
Monotone glass fronted cement towers reach up to block nature’s beauty, the sky & the sea, tree tops, bird chirping, the neighbourhood experience, pedestrians and children playing in the street.
The 7th October changed perceptions, points of view and feelings.
The Structures created by Ruth remained two storied.
The base floor was created in different colour clay giving it natural beauty, covered in Ruth’s fingerprints like ancient tiles. The body of the structures engraved with abstract symbolic patterns which were common with statues of tribal people.

On top of the base floor rises a sculptural and unique cover that gives each building its own personal characteristics.

The buildings stand together, rooted in the ground, around an empty space, a metaphor for squares that have been emptied of people as a reminder of the Corona (COVID-19) period when we were cut off and stuck at home

The buildings commemorate minarets, or buildings that indicate burial places, abandoned castles, or distant places drawn from the reservoirs of personal and collective memory.

The local squares at this time are filled with a thunderous silence of hopelessness and despair.

The squares are dedicated to reminding us of the abductees. Their photographs evoke feelings of anxiety, terror, and concern for their safety.

Voices of joy and jubilation are replaced by a sea of tears, and protests of various kinds.

Candles, flags, photographs turn the square into an area of collective memory into a disturbing and surreal reality.

The city square is empty and there is no one visiting the Temple Mount in the old city, laments Naomi Shemer in her poem Jerusalem of Gold.

Something inside us is broken, the game is fixed, personal and collective security has dissolved.

Next to him is the screaming group, anonymous heads with wide eyes and gaping mouths, from whom the scream emanates, fills the space of the gallery, and gradually spreads throughout the entire world.

The scream expressing existential anxiety becomes the main marker of the piece, when it is expressed with extreme expressiveness, free of any unnecessary note

The eyes gaze at the scene, unbelieving.

A small box of clay, in its center of an eye glazed with artificial glass, creates the pupil that appears as a prosthetic eye, a frozen look out of a fictional window.

The eye - as a wound from the inside, reminds us of the title of Stanley Kubrick's film from 1994 - "Eyes Wide Shut".

Ruth Shomroni's installation is a beautiful, poetic memorial to what was and will not return.

Will we rise from the ruins? Can we stand at edge of the abyss and be saved?

Curators: Sari Paran, Arie Kutz Read more

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