August 1, 2010
Yehudit Sasportas
(1969, Ashdod, Israël)
An installation like ‘The Guardian of The Pearl’s Shadow’ by the Israeli artist Yehudit
Sasportas works at many levels. Visitors immediately undergo its aesthetic effect, but they
can also submerge themselves more deeply to probe its interpretation, symbolic value and
meaning. There is room for both analysis and the mystery. Autobiographical elements and
oriental traditions are interwoven with scientific insights and the achievements of modernism.
Her whole work is an attempt at achieving a synthesis between local particularity and
universal dimensions, extreme rationality and a yearning for spirituality. Apparent opposites
turn out to be indispensable building blocks for the unity of the world.
An alien presence seems to have lodged itself in the exhibition space, separating it from its
immediate surroundings. Visual elements from another age and place have neatly grafted
themselves onto the architecture and wrenched it away from its usual context and references.
The exhibition space has metamorphosed into an inner space with multiple identities. It could
be an aquarium, or a spot on the bottom of the ocean, on account of the marine colours on the
walls, but there is also the suggestion of a dead lake on the table, and a black boat gliding
diagonally through the space. Or is it a cavern in the mountains, whose contours emerge in the
drawings? All this almost ageless visual splendour evokes memories of finds in antique
tombs, while the depictions of ancient trees and geometric structures refer to mystical
gardens. This mixture of uncertain identities supports the metaphor of a spiritual place, which
– although it relies totally on material structures for its concrete manifestations – returns in
different guises at different points in time and space.
The architecture and garden layout of the
Far East play a role in the wall sculpture, the layout of the table, the lamp, and the abstract
decorative nature of the black-and-white drawings. The whole frame of reference of the Far
East emphasises the temporary nature of architecture, while the tradition of the Near East
makes the Word prevail over the anchored image. Decay and death are represented in the
endangered nature and uprooted trees in the drawings, the ashes of the leaves on the table, and
the darkness in general. The mystical transition to another state is indicated by the reflections
on the table and in the drawings, the numerous suggestions of an underwater world and the
caves, but especially by the highlighted boat, which carries the most precious treasure in the
installation – the pearls – to an ‘other side’. Because all these representations possess, above
all, sign value, they are as many reflections of another life. The title of the exhibition, ‘The
Guardian of The Pearl’s Shadow’, indicates that it is not the pearl itself that is cherished and
passed on in the mystical garden, but its shadows (or its digital code?). The boat and the lamp
touch upon the core of the mystery. Sasportas likes to refer to the four levels of understanding
as taught by the Cabbala.
http://www.sommercontemporaryart.com/sasportas/guardian.html
"The Shadow's Wall", 2006 courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin
