“…If beauty is created here from art, then the dead create beauty from what is radiated from the heart, kinds of animations of people remembering their deaths…” Rudolf Steiner
This exhibition shows the photographic works of Yaron Rosner, student and close friend of Morel Derfler who was killed in the suicide attack at the Nahariya train station on September 9, 2001.
Morel’s tragic death and his sudden cruel disappearance created within all of us – acquaintances, friends and family members- an instant need to remember and to touch his special qualities as both man and creator. Yet it seems that more than anything, Morel’s death created new connections and close, deep friendships. It is from this place that the connection and friendship between Yaron, the school, and myself was woven.
The exhibition is a consolidation of new discoveries, memories and associations, which were brought into focus after Morel’s death. It is the outcome of “Morelian Intuition”, something that connects people and relates to his death. In his absence and in the abundant work he left behind, Morel continually influences and inspires.
The work shown here does not deal with Morel the person, but with his death, with the hole he left in our world. In his work Yaron moves between the physical and the spiritual. In the series of photographs, “Burial Sites”, there is a realistic photographic view point that marks the grave’s appearance, gray, dark, and impenetrable: a physical mark, “A landmark that is the ending mark”, (Yaron Rosner), but beyond the realistic manners of representation. There is a spiritual gaze that through thoughts and associations, aspires to penetrate beyond the physical, the local, the sensual, to reach a deep astral experience dependent on appearances and memory.
The work “Passage” relates to the passage of the dead from one world to another, as well as to our own passage: the grieving and the remembering, between uncertainty and confusion to awareness and acceptance of the death of a loved one. The photographed figure disappears and reappears, formed by patches of light and dark, which simultaneously conceal and distance the figure: flickerings of memories that contain transparency and connection to the world beyond, but also a barrier and closure (physical). The illuminated figure burns while producing strong light that emphasizes the limits of our ability to see. This is a continuous series of single still photographs that allows the eye to remember. It is a photographic viewpoint, aware of the eye’s inability to remember a quickly changing chain of events and images.
The third series “Light Tunnels” deals solely with light, transfiguration of light, new life forms, and the flashes of life.
“Flickerings in Black and White” is a series of works that Morel created while he was living in America, which dealt with his impressions of life and death. Yaron decided to give his exhibition the title “Flickerings in Black and White II”- not out of desire for a continuation of Morel’s work- but as an hommage to Morel and his work, and out of their joint aspiration to create a work together, something that didn’t happen, but perhaps in effect did…
Avi Sabag
Curator
Burial Pit
Mound 1
Mound 2
Mound 3
Passage
Passage 1
Passage 2
Passage 3
Passage 4
Passage 5
Passage 6
Transfiguration 1
Transfiguration 2
Transfiguration 3
Transfiguration 4
Transfiguration 5
Transfiguration 6
Transfiguration 7
Transfiguration 8
