Street Tales | Sigalit Landau, Shir Moran
April 4th - June 21st, 2024
Alon Segev Gallery is pleased to present Street Tales, a duo exhibition by Sigalit Landau and Shir Moran.
This duo exhibition introduces two bodies of work, created in a different time and place, yet the two are not strange to each other. Moran and Landau introduce a world of fantasy and storytelling with modern and material reality, dealing with loss alongside the longing for love and life.
A female bump is a bumper / Text by Naama Arad
"Street Tales" was born out of a connection between a work Sigalit Landau created in England at the turn of the Millennium and paintings painted by Shir Moran during a recent winter in Berlin. These two bodies of work are now presented together in a gallery located on a southern Tel Aviv street corner, an area where machine oil and polished concrete floors mix. On the hot tin roofs of Engine (Ha-Mano'a) Street, time burns like fuel, the cats get high on steam.
The relationship between women and machines is especially felt in areas of repair shops for automobiles. The smell of urine blends with the sound of horns. A warning light flickers on and makes the heart skip a beat. The anatomy of a car is shrouded in mystery. Sharp angles accentuate the curves of the sleazy calendar girl. She watches from the office, through the window’s screen. As the hood flips up like a skirt in the wind, a terrifying system of organs is revealed. While the combustion is internal and hidden, every bang leaves a mark on the steel.
The cult horror film 'Christine' (1983) tells the story of a teenage boy named Arnie and a red Plymouth Fury made in the 1950s. Arnie spends hours of work, and from a state of total loss, Christine is transformed into a femme fatale - beautiful, fast, and furious. But a series of hit-and-runs make the awful truth revealed: at night, Christine wakes up and drives around town with a hunger to kill.
The revival of objects and characters is common to both bodies of work presented in this exhibition. Landau's project 'SOMNAMBULIN/BAUCHAUS' is based on Orla, The Little Match Stick Girl, who froze to death during the industrial revolution. Now, she is resurrected as a giant masked mechanical doll, playing tunes on a concrete mixer.
The juxtaposition of these two distinct bodies of work sparks the ignition, reinforces the links. The skin that was stripped out of Orla's sculpted body becomes the substrate for the hanging paintings. The revolving movement of the concrete mixer casts the landscape and forms the patterns. The psyche is a production plant for narratives; it feeds on a cocktail of distilled emotions. While the mind makes up the stories, the skin becomes a surface for projections. Leather is stretched on the frame, the excess slips over the edges.
The works in the show explore the limitation of sensory processing in the face of visual abundance. Little Orla is all grown up now. She is massive. Handing out ice instead of fire, she has a mixer, and she likes to DJ. Moran systematically draws mental circles driven by fears and passions. Memories blend with visions and leak out in color formations. Past pictures flip through the head, painting is an attempt to untangle the strings. Dye is absorbed in the hair, piss drips on the leaves .
In today's techno-feminist reality, every woman can be fulfilled. Identity is exterior and post-fluid, embryos are made to freeze. The city is like a transhumanistic uterus, a woman is created from a skyscraper's rib. A mixture of cordyceps and hyaluronic acid dials back the clocks, slows down the speed. You're hurtling toward the cliff with an automatic gearbox, you're living in an animated film. A club kid who grew up in the 90s, you hear a ringtone and melt from within.
