TURGOR, 2014
HD-Video Performance, 3'09"
(Münster, 2014)
“Turgor” is a video documentation of the deceptively simple action of the artist submerging his head into a cube-shaped water tank on the promenade in front of the Zwinger building, in ‘the city of water’, Münster.
Filmed as a single continuous shot, the video juxtaposes various almost contrary elements: the backdrop of a building once used as a torture cell and execution site during the Nazi years; a song sung by his grandmother and the melodic chirping of birds; and the artist’s inverted entrance into the water and the indefinite pause in his breathing, while people ride by behind him on their bicycles, seemingly unaware or indifferent to the act of exertion taking place within eyeshot. By referencing the history of water torture, this work reads both like a physical re-enactment of this type of physical and psychological, and as a metaphor for human struggle, fear and memory. The concept of turgor pressure – taken from biological terminology where it signifies the distension of plant tissue due to adequate fluid content – here alludes to the condition of being full of life and is a manifestation of the quality of absence characteristic of Holocaust representations, as well as the filling of space.
Screenings:
2021 'Water, Japanese, sky and what's beneath', Video installation. A-Ganre Festival, TMUNA Theater, Tel Aviv, Curators: Nitzan Cohen, Erez Maayan Shalev
2021 'Heat and Dust' - Between India and Zion, online exhibition, IIC New Delhi with the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi
2020 Art of sustainability, 50th exhibition of the Group Global 3000, Berlin. Germany.
2018 'Changing Rooms' | PHOTO IS:RAEL - the International Photography Festival #6, Tel Aviv, Israel.
2018 GROUND LEVEL, *Solo Exhibition, LOKO Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
*partnership program: The Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2018
2017 AVAF - Addis Video Art Festival, 2nd Edition International Video Art Festival, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2016 ZOOROPA, A project of FRIENDLY FIRE in coproduction with LOFFT - DAS THEATER, Leipzig, Germany
2016 VORORT 2 draußen, International Artist Symposium, Starzach-Börstingen, Germany
2016 FAÇADE VIDEO FESTIVAL, Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, The Ancient Bath, Bulgaria. (*Top 10 selected video works)
2015 Better Place, cellule 516, Marseille, France. Sigalit Landau with the participation of Yotam From and Eyal Segal. Curator: Audrey Koulinsky
2015 Screening Project: Dongshi Sangyoung, Open Box at Jujube Artists Studio in Seoul, South Korea. Curator: Jungeun Kim
2015 Release: Return, Solo Exhibition, FUGA budapest center of architecture, Budapest, Curator: Lili Boros
2015 Waterscapes: The Politics of Water, Pohang Museum of Steel Art, Pohang, South Korea. Curator: Hyewon Lee
2014 Waterscapes: The Politics of Water, The Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea. Curator: Hyewon Lee
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©Eyal Segal
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