Original Sculptures* from the Petach Tikva Museum of Art Collection, wooden pedestals, projectors, smoke machine, sound system; 3:23 min in loop; Music: 'Bird of Prey' (Segment) by Jim Morrison; Piano adaptation: Maya Dunietz; Sound Editing: Rona Geffen; Dimensions Variable. Commisioned by Petach Tikva Museum of Art. Documentation: Shaxaf Haber
*Zvi Aldoubi, Yizkor, 1960s, bronze, 76x46x40 cm; Ze'ev Ben Zvi, The Pioneer, 1930s, bronze, 70x33x36 cm; Mordechai Gumpel, mosaic walls at Yad Lebanim Museum, Petach Tikva, 1966-67; Yehoshua Yoshpan, The Pioneer, 1930s, bronze, 54x54x39 cm.
Review ‘Heroica’, Smadar Sheffi for Ha’aretz (Heb), April 22
Review ‘Heroica’, Angela Levine for Midnight East, May 29
Review ‘Shesh Besh’ and ‘Heroica’, Hila Shkolnik Brenner for Tel Aviv City Mouse (Heb), Issue 859
Read Irit Carmon Popper's text:
Rodeh's audio-visual silhouettes blur the materiality of the massive modernist sculptures mounted on a Russian Constructivist type of semi-architectural structure, as a variation on a victor's podium. The installation constitutes a dark site conveying a Pagan ritualistic air, where the sacred metaphysical aura, despite its artificial graininess and the exposure of the illusion which sets it in motion, never ceases to engage in agrandizement. With theatrical effects drawn from the clubbing culture, the artist pits the eternal and sublime with values of camp and trash, thus reflecting the transformation from the mythological hero's sculpture to a requisite in a primitive silhouette spectacle. The glorification and dramatization generate an experience of ritualistic empowerment centered on the hero—not the static sculpted one, but the viewer who is blinded, observing the work as if he were sightless. The song's lyrics expose an affinity between the intense flight of the bird of prey from the adjacent space and the yearning for desistence, reinforcing the link between heroism and death, rendered ever more conspicuous vis-à-vis the resounding silence of the commemoration compound.*** The choice of two such visually divergent works which offer a diametrically opposed viewing experience—works which were, in fact, motivated by a similar act of image deconstruction and its uprooting from the mythological context in favour of a current, personal narrative—indicates the project's intention to introduce a wide spectrum of interpretations for refined, quintessential mindsets and motifs in the subconscious of local culture.
