Anticipation Time

March 6 – June 26, 2010

Deganit Berest, Jakup Ferri, Sofia Hultén, William Hunt, Oz Malul, Batsheva Ross, Orly Sever, Jordan Wolfson

Curator: Leah Abir

 

"After all, our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation."

Honoré de Balzac

 

 

"Anticipation Time" defines those critical moments between the end of an object's movement and its human perception. This temporal gap, which precedes the "response time," is filled up by sensory experience and awareness that anticipate movement, behavior and interpretation.  This exhibition examines the concrete biological, physical, psychological and social aspects of "anticipation time" – as well as the poetic potential of the terms – "time" and "anticipation."

 

"Anticipation time" is a synthesis of past and future condensed into an enduring present. Based on past assumptions and a desire to foresee what is about to take place, it marks the crystallization of expectations. The works included in this exhibition are displayed in a museum space, whose rules and conventions the viewer is required to respect. Yet these very same rules and conventions are ones that the artist is expected to repeatedly break or ignore – transgressing limits and disrupting the existing order. The museum space is one of detachment, withdrawal, contrivance and suspension. As such, it enables one to pay attention to the experience of duration as a subjective, fluid and changing concept, which is at times defined precisely by what extends beyond it.  

 

The point of departure for the works presented in this exhibition is a series of experiences that are familiar to the senses and which are often taken for granted, ones born in the course of everyday contact with the world. These works offer an experience of lingering: the stability of the moment is disrupted, and the present continues to endure beyond the limits of reason and understanding. These exceptional moments are always, at the same time, also incidental. The premonition of various threats and dangers is countered with humorous, playful strategies: extremes are revealed as an aspect of the everyday, while the everyday is revealed in all of its extremity.

 

These works examine the various possibilities embodied in duration, such as continuity, succession, circuitousness and simultaneity. They stretch and shrink duration, expanding and condensing it. They are often born of continuums and repetitions, while opening up onto the abyss of absence. They perform actions related to counting and examine their failure. They explore various processes and missions and reveal them to be unfounded. They contain carefully constructed, awkward or absurd mechanisms, which generate the relationships and shape the influences and responses that arise in the gap between work and viewer. "Anticipation time" is present in this exhibition as an element underlying duration, while also expanding it limits. The works operate within this gap, constantly filling and emptying it out.

 

The exhibition opening on Saturday, March 6, at 8:00 p.m.,

will feature a live performance – a new work  by William Hunt titled I never put my hope, In any other, But you.

 

Hunt will present a performative sculptural installation composed of plaster casts of the artist's head, which were created while he performed various parts in a polyphonic musical piece. The exhibition opening will include a live performance in which the work process will be completed, and the various voices of which it is composed will first be heard.