Beit Uri & Rami Nehoshtan Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov Meuhad, Israel. Curator: Smadar Keren
Photography: Meidad Suchowolski, Room specifications: David Chaki
Group exhibition
“Nothing prepares the viewer for an encounter with Matter, Doris Arkin’s new work, an installation that has originated from the exhibition’s central theme. To reach the work, the viewer must walk around a cube-like white structure that has a clean, meticulous appearance, sealed tight on all sides. On the far side, a “black hole” is revealed surprisingly- a space opens from a sharply-cut doorway, creating a sense of illusion and inviting the viewer to be swallowed in it. The interior of the room reveals an unnatural sight, which looks like nothing else: some kind of dark, dense void, reddish-brown in color. At its bottom lies a hairy, prickly object with long arms. Half of it is wrapped in a thick darkness that cancels all spatial orientation, while the other half is lit by thin light from an uncertain source. The eye does not become accustomed to the darkness; it has neither the ability nor the need. What it sees is the thing itself- a detached lawless universe enveloping a body with a life of its own, a creature that emerges from it and is yet connected to it with unbreakable ties.
The nuclear family as a capsule of socialization has been a recurrent theme in Arkin’s work over the years. Parental responsibilities, childhood experiences, and “relationships of will and failure,” in her words, are her creative/content engine. These relationships manifest in the works as a constant, unresolved tension between protective, inclusive, accepting situations, and a violent disruption that creates a disturbance and finds expression in harsh, wounding materiality. Like in previous works, in Matter Arkin makes use of “remembering” raw materials that undergo transformations and become new content. The heart of the work and its point of origin is the sculpture at its center – a basket resembling a nest made of intersecting metal bands, their weaving incomplete. A blanket made of squares of sandpaper held together with leather strings spills out of the basket. The arms of the basket are spread outward, stretching and pulling toward the walls, never reaching them. The thing seems like a living creature, fragile and menacing at the same time. The relationship between the sculpture and its surroundings is unresolved: the immediate empathy and compassion it might evoke are hindered by its restrictive environment – the seemingly protective space that suffocates and disorients, making it hard to remain there.
Matter, one of Arkin’s more personal and enigmatic works, completely merges matter as a conduit for creation and motherhood as an ethical, existential option, offering, for the first time, an expansion of her work into a total physical and emotional experience”.
Smadar Keren – Press release
