Installation no. 17, 2013
2 channel HD projection
Sheetrock, 50×50×450 cm
Inkjet print, 99×71 cm
Installation view at Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2013
JAN TICHY
Overlap
13 June – 20 July 2013
Overlap is Jan Tichy's first solo exhibition at Hezi Cohen Gallery. Tichy introduces three interconnected bodies of work, that together present the artist's unique and inquiring gaze upon the referential systems that link the private space and the public space.
Upon entering the gallery, the viewer steps into the darkened and recalibrated space of Installation No. 17 (2013), created for and from within the space of Hezi Cohen Gallery, and following a series of installation works in which Tichy combines video projections with the positioning of sculptural and architectural objects.
Tichy redefines the gallery space by manipulating the light inside, reducing it to an array of geometrical shapes dynamically sustained within the space. The gallery's interior space turns into a laboratory examining the phenomena related to the outside space: the way we are affected by the light conditions of the architectural spaces throughout the different hours of the day.
Further inside, the gallery space offers the viewer an encounter with the public space of the Changing Chicago (2012) series – seven video works, in which Tichy studies sites in the public space of Chicago, the city in which he has lived and worked for six years.
The series refers to the project of the same name, in which 33 photographers were commissioned to document the city's daily life and which was exhibited in Chicago in the late 1980s. In 2011, Tichy was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (MoCP) to create and curate an exhibition from their collection. In the exhibition – 1979:1-2012:21 (2012) – Tichy has chosen to display a selection of the original photographs of the Changing Chicago project, extending their interpretation through new arrangement and inclusion of his own series of video works Changing Chicago (2012).
Whereas the photographers of the original project focused their gazes upon the surface of the city – the people and their immediate environment – Tichy's gaze is distanced in an angle that reveals each site in its general set up, and the inhabitants' activities influenced by the light conditions which are in constant flux, capturing their encounter with architecture. Tichy's camera is static for the entire shoot, and thus it offers a dissection of the decisive moment.
Certificates of Authenticity (2005-12), awaiting the viewer on the upstairs level, is a series of still photographs, which Tichy has shot with his camera and collected over the years. Looking at the images one by one, introduces the light both in its traditional role of enabling the image, as well as an object of itself. The horizontal and vertical sights arising from the photographs offer a formal key, which resonates throughout all the works in the exhibition.
Jan Tichy (b. 1974, Prague), is an Israeli artist who lives and works in Chicago. His previous solo exhibitions include MATRIX 164, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2012); Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008). His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, the Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall Collection, and the collections of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Tichy is the recipient of the Gottesdiener Israeli Art Prize, 2010.
Hezi Cohen Gallery
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66042 Tel Aviv
Israel
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Hezi Cohen Gallery
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