Eyal Ben Zvi

After the War

February 11-22, 2000

 

The exhibition After the War was featured in the subterranean passage of the Dizengoff Center shopping mall. Passersby were faced with an apocalyptic vision of "the morning after": a desolate native land-scape, a deficient, faded soil. In the mustardy post-war landscape, the human body transforms into a sign. Depicted in contours, the stick-holding figure recurs in the works. A figure of a wandering fugitive - burdened-down, on the run. Perhaps he is a local, a native, searching for that which was lost. His empty body generates an ambivalent presence - existing yet see-through, present yet faceless and voiceless. In some of the works, the empty body is juxtaposed to a guitarist, likewise devoid of facial features.

The image is akin to history - past, future and present of an occupied territory. It is a post-colonial territory in which the camels move about direction-less, herd-less, non-belonging. The colonialist has left behind his banners and signs, and disappeared. One of the paintings features purple skies and a combined American-Israeli flag, inserted in a body-less well-shaped backside - a grotesque, farcical territory marking.

The donkey, the tractor, the camel, the man with the guitar, the rear end hovering in the landscape - all these transpire in an empty space, amidst desolate hills. The only face seen in the paintings is that of Israeli singer Yehoram Gaon, singing at the top of his voice. His head is tilted backwards, almost suffocating. The poster behind him reads "Zion is Sacred". A desolate Jerusalem of Gold. Sheikh graves are scattered in the mustardy landscape whose horizon is marked by Coke bottles.

One of the works incorporates Salvador Dali's melting clocks extracted from the painting The Persistence of Memory (1931). The soft watches melt into a dreamy picture of rot. In Ben Zvi's works, the sky is impervious and the mustard-colored landscape - turbid. Standing next to the clocks is a saxophone player, an allusion to Bill Clinton and the global-colonial time that regulates the power relations in the barren landscape. In another piece, a man is playing a guitar while a herd of sheep grazes in the dry land. The skyline is delineated with the logo of the soft drink company Crystal, and therealong - duck-targets move toward a mosque or a sheikh's grave. A local apocalypse.

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A desolate Jerusalem of Gold. Sheikh graves are scattered in the mustardy landscape whose horizon is marked by Coke bottles