The exhibition’s title Stable Collection of Unstable Moments denotes an essential dissonance present in Bartal’s works. They depict unstable moments of collapsing entities, portraying a failure of a moment where the whole reality can crumple in no time. Indeed, time is an essential element in Bartal’s works, and his relation to time is multifaceted. In addition to the strong impact of discrete moments, some works are based on cyclical movement, detaching them from a specific time and place. They present meditative movement, which huddles into itself and within itself sustains different mechanisms of disruption: textual disruption, spatial disruption and cultural disruption. 

Although full of playfulness, this exhibition enfolds suspended violence, which is camouflaged by deceiving aestheticization. The sense of violence is also manifested by the presence of cultural coercion and various forms of ordering. The unexpected combination between a violent reality, ironic and humorous, places the works between the contemptuous and shameful, the heroic and full of pathos while slipping towards the pathetic, banal and unrealistic.
Accepting the possibility of liberating freedom leads him to an ironic look at the pompous efforts invested in the various mechanisms that characterize the media and technology-based society we live in, to produce meanings which he sees as empty of content.

Text: Yael Eylat Van-Essen
Curator: Jan Van Woensel
Ladislav Sutnar Gallery
February 23 – April 2, 2022

Photography: Martina Havlová
Design: Dayana Grigoryan

Exhibition Catalog

video: Asaf Alboher
photography: Shay Ben Efrain

Installation accompanied video documentation of the action
The inspiration for the work was a true story I read, in which a reserve soldier who was an electronics enthusiast, improvising an add-on to the Hawk missile system and after several attempts was the first in the world to succeed in dropping the MiG 25 — a formidable spy plane, in the brazen act of a creative Israeli improvisation.

The work is made of terracotta, a ceramic material that has existed since the dawn of mankind and has been used to create tools from the ancient times to the present day. The material ironically mentions the complex ceramic materials used by the aeronautical industry to open the boundaries of the technology to reach space and fly at speeds.

In the performance, the plane flies in front of a wall with two home rockets on it that look like the jet engine. The plane flies confidently into the wall in front of it and crashes. Fragment of the aircraft, some of which get stuck in the wall and most of them scatter in space, are part of the final installation. Slow motion video documents the violent event that created the installation.

The work ironically portrays human history’s attempt to shape the world through the tools around us and to stretch the boundaries of material and technology beyond our human material being

Opening: Thursday 14.4.2016, 8pm
During The Walking Man Award for “Urban Activism” ceremony

As part of the Grand Opening at Beit Ha’Ir, a first-of-its-kind event will take place, highlighting the work of activists in the city of Tel- Aviv- Jaffa. The event includes an installation showcasing selected works from The Walking Man project, creating the background and setting for the entire event. During the Opening evening, activists working within city limits and in different scenes, will be awarded The Walking Man Decoration.
The Walking Man, a pioneering project born on the streets of Tel Aviv- Jaffa, was created by Eitan Bartel and Ilan Goldstein in the early 1990’s and paved the way for urban activism. The Walking Man’s first step on the streets of Tel Aviv- Jaffa, was taken with a graffiti picturing the walking man figure appearing on pedestrian traffic lights, along with the words “soon I’ll get far”. The figure and its declaration are symbols of forward- moving determination, action independent of achievement or goal. 

From the walls of the city, the graffiti moved to a column in Ha’Ir newspaper, while several installations were erected around the city, utilizing the Homa and Migdal method. This undermining course of action, challenged the establishments control over the municipal space. The peak of the project was a Walking Man for Mayor Campaign (1993): A fictional character with a subversive agenda. Issues buried deep in the city’s complaint box until then, turned into the campaigns agenda, manifested as aggressive, media- covered street activity.

The exhibition celebrating the release of the book, documents The Walking Man’s determined journey through the streets of Tel Aviv- Jaffa and the campaign. The exhibition will focus on The Walking Man’s aggressive campaign, trumpeting a civil agenda with biting language. In addition, propaganda actions from the campaign, depicting its subversive and Dadaistic influences, will be presented. Some of the sculpted works Bartel and Goldstein’s stationed around the city, leading to their arrest, will be showcased. The book, released during the exhibition, groups together the entire work associated with The Walking Man project and is a comprehensive and rare document of its time.

The Walking Man Decoration will be awarded during the evening to urban activists, a diverse list of people and occupations, as part of Tel Aviv- Jaffa’s birthday. The goal is to cherish and honor those whose works confront the national priority list with the local. Individualists who dedicate their lives to change and action in area’s others regard as peripheral, negligible and eccentric. The Walking Man Decoration is awarded to those who embarked on their own journey- not waiting for others to join or approve. People who make the city suitable for its inhabitants – the heroes of the city. 

The Grand Opening includes live music and a party. 

The people behind The Walking Man Eitan Bartel and Ilan Goldstein, kids off the streets of Tel Aviv, are bothered with the piling garbage, angry about the lack of pedestrian-only zones, hurt by the attitude towards civilians and shortage of water fountains- created an urban protest, similar to an obsessive writer sending letters to editors, but on a much larger, unprecedented and disproportionate scale. Their familiarity with the field and knowing the rules by which to play in the world of advertising, design, press and music- allowed them to express The Walking Man in different media in an abrasive, rude and almost laughable aesthetic, which laid the groundworks for other activists, designers and street artists. The two continue collaborating on political campaigns for Prime Minister, in Israel and abroad. During this month, BET Ha’Ir will hold a variety of events with and about activists, highlighting different aspects of Activism and its importance. 

Chief Curator and Director of Bialik compound: Ayelet Bitan Shlonsky
Artistic consultant: Claudette Zorea
Production and Curation team: Sivan Lustgarten, Shira Granit
Political consultant: Omer Krieger 

Bet Ha’Ir (former city hall) owned by the municipality of Tel Aviv- Jaffa, was renovated in 2009 honoring the city’s Centennial celebrations and is part of the Bialik compound- a compound for Hebrew and Israeli culture, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Under the management of Ayelet Bitan Shlonsky, Chief Curator, Bet Ha’Ir has turned to a unique visual center for urban Tel Aviv- Jaffa culture and a home to the city’s residents: Artists, creators, intellectuals, tourists and guests seeking to know Tel Aviv and become a part of its being.

The long arm of the Fundamentalist Gunpowder Printer prints texts in Arabic and in Hebrew – words and sentences that contain central ideas of the monotheistic faith in Islam, and similar ideas from Jewish sacred texts. The words are collected from blogs of extremists operating in the area, which are scanned in real time through the internet by means of a special algorithm written for that purpose. These are loaded words such as “Allah akhbar,” “The Lord is one,” “jihad,” “Judgment Day,” “exhortation,” “salvation,” and “immigration,” which appear in these sources. Propaganda mechanisms form both sides of the political scene use these words in the national-religious context, and often load them with explosive messages, and thus drive their recipients to action. Violent messages are given aesthetic characteristics, through the choice of typography of ornamental character. The Arabic and Hebrew texts are intertwined, and produce kaleidoscopic forms resembling arabesques. This is not ordinary printing powder, but rather gunpowder, which brings out the metaphoric “explosiveness” of the printed words, and gives them material expression. In this work, Bartal plays with the meanings of the messages of the various propaganda systems, and moves between the cultural space in whose framework they operate, and the political unconscious that exists in parallel to them.

Neo-Bartalism, solo exhibition, 2017
website

Neo-Brutalism integrates techniques of new media – surveillance technologies, robotics, image processing and machine learning – with videos and physical objects produced with low-tech tehnologies. This is in many ways a nihilistic exhibition, but poetic and full of humor. It deals defiantly with mechanisms of control and propaganda, with capitalist mechanisms, with feminism, religion, stereotypes of the Israeli character, and with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It presents clichés and at the same time ridicules them and deconstructs them to a level that is empty of content. It is at once political and a-political, concrete and abstract, deals with global issues and touches on the most delicate facets of social and political reality in Israel.

The work is a sort of iconic altar that sanctifies national fetishism — to establish a startup that will sell for millions, a so-called exit. In the ironically interactive work, the viewer is asked to connect the amount the ‘stratupist’ (the startup entrepreneur) had made  on exit to his smiling face. If successful, flashing bulbs light up like an arcade game. The piece criticizes the high-tech culture, whose main motivation in Israel is maximum profit in minimum time to win the winner’s smile. This motivation and its results distort Israeli society and polarize it into two classes – those who made the exit and those who did not. The work gives the viewer the opportunity for a moment to participate in the celebration.

The Electric Totem is reminiscent of a storefront display. The installation mimics the common modes of display in major electrical appliance stores which present their mass produced products at clearance prices. It incorporates daily appliances, in which I juxtaposed the temporary with the timeless, to create cheap disposable objects made of ceramics. The obsessive use of cheaply manufactured appliances made in China represent the ease with which modern culture dispenses of poorly manufactured products.
The piece demonstrates how modern commercial culture propagates compulsive product consumption. The use of traditional workmanship incorporating quality ceramic techniques, confronts and ridicules the objects produced by mass industrialization and value-free design.

Now showing at the designjunction London, and was exhibited at the “Design Underground” at the Tel Aviv Binyamini Art Center. The exhibition addressed the relationship between designers, industry and users illuminating the contemporary disposable corporate culture. ( Exhibition Review)

​The Alfa Balloon is a giant balloon, two meters in diameter, attached to a system of monitors and sensors. It follows visitors in the space by means of a concealed robot, while disrupting their movement and blocking their field of vision. The movement of the ball is accompanied by a warning sound which grows in volume the closer it comes to the visitor, and intensifies the feeling of discomfort. The work deals with tactics of control, surveillance and supervision through technology. It draws its inspiration from the television series “The Prisoner,” which was broadcast in the 1960’s, and among other things is remembered today because of the disturbing image of a man running along the sea shore chased by a giant white ball. Such a threat is ridiculed in light of the fact that the giant ball is full of air, creating an ironic gap between the image created by the inflated object and its content.

​Neo-Bartalism, Solo Exhibition, 2017
website

Neo-Bartalism integrates techniques of new media – surveillance technologies, robotics, image processing and machine learning – with videos and physical objects produced with low-tech tehnologies. This is in many ways a nihilistic exhibition, but poetic and full of humor. It deals defiantly with mechanisms of control and propaganda, with capitalist mechanisms, with feminism, religion, stereotypes of the Israeli character, and with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It presents clichés and at the same time ridicules them and deconstructs them to a level that is empty of content. It is at once political and a-political, concrete and abstract, deals with global issues and touches on the most delicate facets of social and political reality in Israel.

The video piece 100 grams blacks refers to the Hebrew slang for sunflower seeds, a common snack in Israel sold in local kiosks. In this piece, Bartal slowly spins for a full hour, while cracking, eating and spitting the shells of 100 grams of sunflower seeds.

In so doing, Bartal creates a symbolic juxtaposition between the Levantine cultural context – the act of cracking the seeds –,and the poetic result of a perfect, materially comprised circle (made from the shells).

The act of spitting – Middle Eastern, vulgar, indecent – becomes a cultured act resulting in the creation of high, respectable and acceptable art.

The piece is in dialogue with aspects of sub-culture, abjection and proletarianism, and emphasizes connections between social opposites.

The act itself, of an hour spent solely cracking seeds, is a sort of Zen act – silent, repetitive and monotonous. The final result – a ring of shells – architecturally calls to mind a Zen garden. A spiritual act thus arises from vulgarity.

​Sunflower seeds shooter is a machine of crude tin that shoots sunflower seeds. It is driven by a device that uses computerized vision and surveillance technology, and homes in on the spectators at random and focuses its muzzle at them.​
Spitting out husks is an expression of the defiant Israeli street culture, the marginal culture which refuses to adopt conventions that are considered polite and leaves its traces on space in a sort of conquest of territory.

​Neo-Bartalism, Solo Exhibition, 2017
website

Neo-Bartalism integrates techniques of new media – surveillance technologies, robotics, image processing and machine learning – with videos and physical objects produced with low-tech tehnologies. This is in many ways a nihilistic exhibition, but poetic and full of humor. It deals defiantly with mechanisms of control and propaganda, with capitalist mechanisms, with feminism, religion, stereotypes of the Israeli character, and with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It presents clichés and at the same time ridicules them and deconstructs them to a level that is empty of content. It is at once political and a-political, concrete and abstract, deals with global issues and touches on the most delicate facets of social and political reality in Israel.