Nir Harel Born 1978, Israel
2004 / BFA, Fine Art Department,
Bezalel, Academy of Art and design
Jerusalem

Nir Harel in conversation with Masha Zusman:
 
 
Nir: I work in stages. First, using a computer paint program, I draw a set of
details that will use me as elements in a story; the second stage starts when
I meet the printouts of the drawings. With time, I was surprised to discover
that this stage starts with feelings of alienation. Most of the plans and ideas
fade away in the direct encounter with the printouts – my work emerges
out of an attempt to propel/interpret what stands before me, to find a place
for a different drawing inside the tangle I had created.
The re-acquaintance opens with almost random steps: acts of reaction and
identification, actions trying to follow the given logic, to open gaps in it or
create collaborations.
I am interested in a moment of alienation; to me, alienation is the key to
free thought. The ability to differentiate is a first step towards action outside
of the crowd. In the drawings there are incidents of fictitious materiality,
anti-concrete images and elements which look similar, but do not hold
relations of similarity. Meaning, they are not an expressed representation,
it might look familiar, but despite that it is encrypted. The drawings are
the product of an accumulation of steps, an invention of primary elements
used to create a broad logic, or steps similar to the transformation of a
caterpillar into a butterfly.
My painting refuses to be a surface on a wall. I send it into the space in
order to examine its wall quality and undermine it. I try to transform it
from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from opaque to transparent
and from a lit object to a lighting object, to enhance the movement taking
place in front of the viewer.
 
 
Masha: When I look at the different simulations you create with the computer, I see a connection to Russian constructivism. For them it was the future, for you, the realization is completely low tech. The space that Tatlin defined in his works is
not a social space; it is not designed for man, it is a model mausoleum. In your
constructions there is a certain personification, but a strange one, since it was
created with a computer.
 
N: I start with drawings made with a computer, then I paint on the prints,
cut them and position in space. They are part of the investigation of the
final shape, a lampshade, for instance, that the painting will get. At some
point I go back to the computer and create a simulation of the space. The
simulation expresses the axis between the virtual situation and the physical
and material exploration. That is a moment in which the painting is a part
of a process of discovering a shape, and the virtual becomes the horizon.
 
M: When I look at your works, I think of topological shapes, for instance Möbius
strip, a two dimensional shape that has only one side – a space whose inside
and outside are one and the same. You see both at the same time. It has this sort
of mathematical idealism, but I always have an organic notion of it, perhaps
because there is no distinction between in and out.
 
N: The drawings do indeed stem from a shared source, share subjects that
gain different shapes in space and blend with one another, while the viewer
walks among them. I intend to create an alternation between the lighting
that will be placed inside the works, and the space’s lighting – a sort of a
transition between zones, to establish a circulation in the space.
 
M: It starts with technology, but its behavior, the way it spreads through space, is of a living, organic creature, like an engineered virus.
 
N: For me, the paintings in the exhibition space function as divides, not as
walls. I would like them to become an active partition, a membrane, one
that is set in motion by the light, which allows the different details blend
between the layers.
 
[Masha Zusman is an artist].