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until 12.03. | #1041ARTatBerlin | SAVVY Contemporary presents from 08th February 2017 the essay-exhibition “THE LAW OF THE PURSUER” by the artist Amos Gitai.
THE LAW OF THE PURSUER is an essay exhibition by Amos Gitai revolving around issues and themes raised in his film Rabin, the Last Day (2015) about the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4th 1995. Featuring unreleased research material and film footage from Gitai’s archive collected in the course of the last twenty years, the exhibition’s central piece will be a new video-installation with a performative element commissioned by SAVVY Contemporary. This new work questions the shifting concept of democracy and addresses the problem of extremisms and the current crisis of politics. Resonating with the structure of the film, his installation is a whirlwind of discourse surrounding the dreadful and confounding act of violence that took place in Tel Aviv, while also becoming a metaphor of the consequences of a polarized and poisonous atmosphere of political extremism. THE LAW OF THE PURSUER shows how inflammatory and fundamentalist language can instill violence and sow the seeds of brutality, it is an examination and a psychoanalytical portrait of a traumatized political context and society speaking to the one we are living in today.
As Gitai insinuates, the consequences of the assassination of the signatory of the Oslo Accords are still visible today, and the animators of that climate of hate and rage are now fully in power. The political project of Israel seems temporally defeated and exhausted, defeated by the folly of the religious project. Traveling back through history and exploring the unbearable violence with which the nationalist forces fought Rabin’s peace project, letting that reality appear through a juxtaposition of fragments carved into collective memory, Gitai’s installation will not only represent an insight into details of the complex political struggles of this period and their consequences for society today, but also, and particularly, as a questioning of our present situation, as a concerned warning for our futures.
As a visual artist, Amos Gitai creates site-specific projects related to his films. These visual and sound itineraries are composed of an exceptional density of elements. The spaces, pictures, sounds and images offer the public the possibility to embark on a personal journey and a unique spatial experience. Similar to architecture (Gitai holds a PhD in architecture from Berkley University), these constructs confront various elements such as photographs, collages, sounds and spaces – to generate responses and considerations from the public, and offer possible new interpretations. Gitai uses film to stimulate profound thoughts on past and present events, dealing also with the transmission of memory and the role of art in relation to these issues. He adopts a singular approach to the theme of memory that immerses viewers in the assessment of a collective experience.
Amos Gitai’s work has been the subject of major retrospectives, notably at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), NFT and ICA (London), Lincoln Center (New York), Berlin’s Kunstwerke, and at the MoMA of New York, among others. His film installations were presented, among other institutions at: the Venice Biennale of Architecture (Israeli Pavillon), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, at the Bauhaus Dessau Masters’ House and at the MAXXI in Rome.
Curatorial Team: Elena Agudio, Antonia Alampi, Abhishek Nilamber
Vernissage: Tuesday, 07th February 2017, 7 p.m.
Exhibition period: Wednesday, 08th February to Sunday, 12th March 2017
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Image caption: via SAVVY Contemporary
Exhibition Amos Gitai – SAVVY Contemporary – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
