Blackfield Zadok Ben David 22 April 2010 – 26 June 2010 Turin
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Blackfield, 2007–09, colour view Painted stainless steel and sand, site-specific Installation in Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, photo Gene Ogami
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Verso Artecontemporanea
Verso Artecontemporanea curatorial staff carry out their first solo show, Blackfield, whose absolute protagonist is the AngloIsraeli artist Zadok Ben David. Exploring the wide-ranging and prolific insight of the well-known sculptor, greeting its artistic project, importing it from international prestigious environments, adds a further meaningful element to the assorted display configuration that Verso is aiming to achieve. The surge of interest had occurred at the first encounter with his installation at the Singapore Biennale in 2008, for his ability to materially miniaturize vegetation and reliably reproduce it in a chain of elements that seem to liven up from an inanimate ground, such as sand, and incorporate it with an optimistic fantastic dimension. His knowledge and his prosperous artistic and cultural background have contributed to achieve the goal of representing the international scene, where he revives the magic that Blackfield and all Zadok Ben David’ work are able, time and again, to express. It is in fact this magic that infuses and enriches his artistic production, joins reality and the unreal, the tangible and the illusory, resulting in a powerful and possible symbiosis. Thought and craft are assembled to shape vegetal, animal and human elements with an equally successful result. It is Zadok Ben David’s privilege to make the unreal and the unlikely harmonically possible, thus giving us the chance of profiting beyond time and trends.
Verso Artecontemporanea
Lo staff curatoriale di Verso Artecontemporanea realizza con Blackfield la sua prima esposizione personale il cui protagonista assoluto è l’ artista anglo-israeliano Zadok Ben David. Esplorare la variegata e prolifica interiorità di tale scultore dal consolidato curriculum e accoglierne il progetto artistico sitespecific, importandolo da scene internazionali di rilievo, pone un ulteriore significativo tassello, al poliedrico puzzle espositivo che Verso si è prefisso di attuare. Il primo incontro con la sua installazione alla Biennale di Singapore del 2008, ha prodotto una sorta di folgorazione attrattiva per la capacità di miniaturizzare così matericamente il mondo botanico e riprodurlo fedelmente nel suo susseguirsi di elementi che sembrano animarsi da un suolo totalmente inerte, quale la sabbia e addizionarlo di una dimensione ottimisticamente illusoria. La conoscenza personale dello scultore e del suo attrezzato bagaglio artistico e culturale, ha contribuito a concretizzare il progetto di porsi come uno degli scenari internazionali in cui dare vita alla rinnovata magia che Blackfield e tutta l’opera di Zadok Ben David sono capaci, di volta in volta, di esprimere. È proprio questa magia a contaminare, arricchendola, la sua produzione che accomuna reale e irreale,concreto e illusorio, in una potente e possibile simbiosi; un assemblaggio di pensiero e manualità che plasma elementi del mondo vegetale, animale o umano con risultato egualmente efficace. Rendere armonicamente possibile l’irreale o l’improbabile è il privilegio di cui Zadok Ben David ci offre l’opportunità di beneficiare al di là del tempo e delle tendenze. Sabrina D’Amely Alessandro Gasparini Cristiana Gasparini
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Blackfield, 2007–09, black view Painted stainless steel and sand, site-specific Installation in Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, photo Gene Ogami
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Victor De Circasia
Blackfield Victor De Circasia From Illusion in Literature to the Age of Nature Exploration or From the Grimm Brothers to Lewis Carroll fantasies with the Garden of Utopia. “That was a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; “and now for the garden!” and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but alas ! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse than ever”, thought the poor child, “ for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!” (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll) Ben David has transformed the gallery space of Verso into a site-specific installation, which draws the audience into an orderly/chaotic and illusionistic world of botanical culture, featuring images of well known plants and trees which have been historically reproduced to an incredibly accurate resolution using the crafts of etching, painting and drawing on stainless steel. Like a wizard with his spells Ben David’s installation Blackfield is an encounter with fables of nature and the illusion of a garden growing in a gallery space1. It is a voyage with the artist; an installation work which is rich in meaning offering us links to aesthetic appreciation, nature, and evolution. We also find an artist who is capable of bringing his own dreams to fruition in an art installation that is awesome, exciting and inspirational.
Zadok is a kind of Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) which, in his books offered a great interpretation of plants and nature see: Systema naturae (1735), Fundamenta botanica (1736) and Genera plantarum (1737). And he follows the steps of the amazing models of Leopold (1822–1895) and Rudolf Blaschka (1857–1939) father and son, which collection continue today to be use extensively in biological and medical instruction and as objects of art in their own right. See. University of Aberdeen Zoology Museum Many of the Blaschkas’ models are still on public display in many botanical institutions among them the most important collections are, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Others elements have spent years in storage like those at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. London’s Science Museum sold its Blaschka collection in the 1920s when the Victorian vogue for ogling glass sea creatures was no longer quite so popular. These models of beautiful and accurate of enlarged flowers were produced
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The field of botanical illustration comes to life in the gallery space. This exhibition takes advantage of the unique space at Verso and will immerse visitors in a single large-scale panoramic image wrapping the length of the gallery. First in line of research was Ben David’s idea of a home-grown Botanica. Next up was the image design representation: an entirely new ground of display. The work promises a utopian city. Ben David is no longer content to give us just plants; he is teaming up with museums, galleries, libraries and many other elements to create the architect’s paradise; entering the city of knowledge. His plans are to eventually roll out a new forest; the installation is the beginning. His template is the spirit of the great explorers and the scientific approach to discovery reviving the tradition of botanical illustration into a tangible future. He provides a unique opportunity to create an ideal forest, working on a concept of transferring a situation of reality into the magical world of a fantasy. More than simply installing a sculpture he plays with a dichotomy of presence or non-existence and switches into something unpredictable. Today, he continues producing this forest, this encyclopaedic botanical world and he plants every square inch with foliage, flowers and trees running along the streets and branching through every wall and fixture as if to invade our world with nature: a magical illustration. Like islands that are modelled as self contained gardens of nature representation: wild elements and dreams that we always imagine visiting. The introduction in scientific literature of large quantities of botanical illustrations helps us to understand Ben David’s work. There have been a great many famous illustrators who have contributed to the visual wealth of knowledge about plants and nature in general. One of the most celebrated is Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840). This Belgian illustrator is credited with developing the technique of hand coloured stipple engraving, which has since been widely used in botanical illustrations. Renderings of botanical subjects date back to ancient times with identifiable plants appearing in Egyptian tombs, on Greek vases, and in Roman mosaics. In early medieval times collections of plant drawings called herbariums appeared. These collections of woodcuts were used to catalogue plants of medicinal interest. Live plants were seldom used as subjects, and in fact, many of the woodcuts were redrawn from earlier works. To modern eyes the drawings appear stiff, and accuracy is often approximate at best, although some are quite charming. Ben David’s work certainly challenges viewers to play with vision thus diverging dramatically from the existentialist position to a magic world something celebratory, galvanizing that inherent inventiveness that seeks constantly to interpret a system for inscribing meaning in what might otherwise be a meaningless world2. Ben David’s installation is an encounter with a dream, an illusion, the subjectivity of nature and a well achieved metaphor. With this installation work,
at Breslau and Berlin. Usually, the models were made of papier mâché, but with other materials added to give detail and texture: wood, cotton, rattan, pulp cane, glass beads, feathers and gelatine. The models made between 1886 and 1895 were made of clear glass and cold-painted with things like fish glue obtained from sturgeon, dammar (botanical sap), hide glue and gum Arabic. Later models were often enamelled. Other materials used to make the models included painted paper for internal structures and actual shells of terrestrial, freshwater and marine gastropods (snails etc). 2 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty References to the Visible and the Invisible
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the artist gives us an inductive strategy on abstract epistemological in order to confer stability and continuity to the explorative practices of contemporary natural history. The valleys, the forests, the lacunas and the country side, have become tamed parks that would eventually become known in this century as centres of recreation. The work is an instant visual reference on colours and shapes of a fragile Eden. Zadok Ben David calls this an opportunity, based not only on the installation of the plants but its evolution into a kind of a digital infrastructure wired to a direct view. He sketches a naturalist vision, a field of space. As the artist en plein air sees the evolution of his installations and its response to different places and situations. The imbedded impression of nature The method that he proposes in establishing ‘natural’ definitions is not deductive, but it is an inductive, bottom-up procedure of comparing concrete specimens at random to give us a general impression of nature. Today the debate of tougher leaves, genetically hardened crops are in contraposition with the work of Zadok Ben David who with this installation typifies a grand eco-scheme that we can observe at close range without any danger of seeing genetic changes in the system of plants. Nature, in the real world, gives us delight but is contrary to the orderly illusion that takes place in the display of Blackfield. With this work Ben David doesn’t intend to comment on climate change or environmental issues. When viewing this vast installation there is an absence of the urban necessities of water, electric power and traffic etc; elements that run parallel with the failure of the world to respond to the depleting trend of nature resources. There is a multiplicity of interconnections to be found between the various issues that arise under the broad subjects he represents. The plants are descriptive and polytypic; the basic entities that we can expect the botanical world to consist of, the problem of generation, the science aspects, the discoveries, the laws, scientific methods, the natural classification and its status. Yet that sui generis of elements represented doesn’t bear close scientific analysis to the earthly paradise he proposes. The contemporary green revival is the umbrella term we could apply to his work to produce a quick reference to the beauty of plants and flowers. In the history of temporary installations related to nature there are few examples in galleries and museums. The work of Ben David goes beyond sculpture and has an immediate impact as an artistic event in a magical project of nature representation. The Dream Reality The installation of his work is a contest between a dream and reality and is a study in euphemistic creativity. Ben David plays in a subtle system in which the design is conceived as a naturalistic botanical expedition and the objective is the voyage of exploration to become a display of a famously redesigned plantarium without losing the metaphor of new discoveries in the Blackfield. The source of his ideas is nature which inspires his sketches of figures,
which gives the results of the Phenomenology of Perception their ontological significance. In that sense, the subject influenced, and often psychological thinking, would be revealed as also presupposing an account of the structure of being, the notion of subjectivity, and its controlling place, is further diminished for the presence of the elements, the reality.
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landscapes, creatures, and birds. Sometimes he employs a mischievous experience of a botanical world that involves fantasy. There’s something essential in the construction of his aesthetic ideas and in the insistence of the human body representation. Our hand is the perfect illustration of the architecture of nature, there is a symbolic code of concept and engineering which he tries to resolve by the construction of a fiction and image representation of an ideal garden in the natural world. Illustration as Art and Science – Sculpture as a Magical Illusion My first encounter with Ben David’s work was at the Venice Biennale a few years ago. Like Blackfield one was immediately struck by its biomorphic suggestiveness. There is always the symbolic and the magical illusion in his work; his imagination seems limitless. He has produced columns that look like palm trees, fish that fly in the air and trees that are transformed into figures. What’s inherent in Ben David’s work is the infrastructure which reveals his tremendous insight into the natural processes. He creates vast arguments within his work and sometimes consciously displays an extravagant and overly expressive element, but the idea behind it is always profound. Nature and evolution are taken further to their most elegant form with the use of no more material than is absolutely necessary. He builds in every work a lesson in colour and shape which subsists with the idea of a magical world. The point of departure is the reaction and acted construction of a forest like display. He works on an interpretative artistic transformation of the botanical world and its evolution; the best example of nature taken as inspiration for the best design. Zadok Ben David’s magic understanding of the laws of mother natura, has allowed him to build radically innovative sculptures, some of which seem to confront nature itself. His best-known work is a project called Evolution and Theory, with the central theme of a reflective research on elements that have contributed to the evolution of man and the sciences, a kind of encyclopaedia, a digest of the new world of discovery. Ben David’s work jumps onto a stairway to heaven, to a world of illusion, dreams and fantasies, without falling victim of any label in his pursuit of aesthetic representation. Coming of Age: the Transformation of Reality Zadok Ben David’s initial designs for his present work are inspired by the idea of a childhood, the act of releasing energy and the idea of entering into hidden spaces: the dream. It was Antonio Gramsci who expressed the idea that “... the scientific ideas clashed with the magical conception of the world and nature that the child absorbs from an environment imbued with folklore”. When his first sculptures were made public, critics compared them to other artists of that period who had certain affinities and resemblances to Ben David’s work, though it is appropriate to reveal that he made his work out of necessity and economical constraints, building with the necessary elements freely available to him. When Ben David first arrived in London he created sculptures from odd artefacts discharged near his studio in South London: wood, planks, leaves, etc. He was making drawings for his work and noting the perfection of those elements which would serve for the inspiration and the design of his first and later sculptures. This new project has since become knotted in an encounter with the town environment, played out in the city’s galleries, in the middle of an urban environment, with a stoicism born of a long experience involved with nature. After nearly three decades of working on his projects, he knows that part of
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doing the installation project means it must be accessible to the viewer. Zadok Ben David’s new projects have an international presence and great critical success. A recent spectacular installation in a Los Angeles gallery was also seen by thousands on Twitter; the spectator interacted in real time inviting their friends to come and see his exhibition as a new discovery. Similarly, in Tel Aviv large crowds attended the exhibition. He has unveiled a master plan for the work; he has put the finishing touches to a massive idea of botanical sciences, a complex interpretative idea: architecture of nature. He has created a body of work that is among the most lyrical and inspiring of any working contemporary sculptor today. We appear to believe that the structure and meaning of the sculpture should be inherent and that we can ignore the thinking behind it. We find symbolic and expressive meaning as the ideas and dream-concepts are made into objects. Indeed, in the current installation the sculptor enhances a joyful mood for nature and its symbolic elements. Zadok Ben David manages to liberate those forces of creation and, at the same time, relaxes our methodical consciousness about our ideas of the real world enabling us to enjoy a fantasy world. He doesn’t create a reductive work and the amount of pieces that are carefully displayed together shows that fact. His installation projections are surprisingly functional and up-to-date with the science of cognoscitive representation. The work raises hope that beyond projects like this we could be inspired in our fight to prevent a shameful decline in nature. The structure of the installation is a conversation piece about the ages of evolution; fragility of Mother Nature and ecosystems in extinction; current and contemporary ideas regarding our involvement and respect for the global ecosystem. Goethe mentions that “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her. Without asking, or warning, she snatches us up into her circling dance, and whirls us on until we are tired, and drop from her arms. She is ever shaping new forms: what is has never yet been; what has been comes not again”. Zadok Ben David installation puts nature as a dream landscape, in perfect balance and in contrast to reality of the appalling suburban strip with nature being replaced by concrete and tall buildings giving us a portrayal of nature in decay. You see how the artist can be both useful and expressive in a work of art. It’s wonderful for the artist to build and complete the elucidation to a problem, with the representation of the dream of a Promised Land. Zadok Ben David’s exhibition offers us a great opportunity to reflect and learn from nature’s great works. He points out and leads us to the development of the dream as an act of growth and to learn from the surroundings including the theme of the development of a city. He is a true believer in the power of the dream to define a place, pointing to nature as an example. His fondness for the spiritual, the ancestral primitive, the myth of the bon sauvage, is thoroughly reflected in the adventurous idea of fostering a world plantarium. Seeing the experience of nature as paradise is perhaps a surprising fulfilment of his artistic dreams. In addition is the open span of creating a symbol with the perception of nature as image (of the plant) reincarnated in an installation work. The compelling rationale for this sculpture is the adventure of building illusions and utopias which allow us to vanish in contemplation, to resolve the structural constraints of space in our real world, without separating the artist elucidation and the magic experience of seeing. This sculpture installation is a tour de force; it is beautiful, peaceful, ordered, and we enjoy and reflect between the forces of bad and evil. Zadok Ben David encounters the audacity of building his dream, not only designing it simply as a platform to serve as sculpture, but also to transform
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its content, by connecting it to the real world and the contemporary idea of sculpture. Climate change has perhaps been a motivation for contemporary artist’s projects. Ben David considers this avenues but he doesn’t get pinned down to a singular view. As often happens to an artist, he was plagued with problems in its topic representation but the artist’s responsibility, in many cases, makes clear the strict surveillance of the illusion and the space that the course the installation takes. It’s relatively easy in structural terms to create a dazzling installation work taking form over the embodiment of his personally and most passionately held views but it is another is to create a magical world where the spectator can recognise these views. Zadok Ben David is motivated to design a place, or erect his installation, by bridging a link with the past, with explorations, with nature, with theory and evolution (his previous work) and giving us a scheme representation of a major art display, rather than producing a simple mock-up of a model of nature. He opts for various points of departure and shows how he could transform a forest and plants into something beautiful to represent and capture the hearts and dreams of the spectator. His work is about the potential to rehabilitate and bring an advantaged artistic perspective into nature. He uses his previously researched sculptural work as a catalysis without destroying or diminishing the priceless aesthetic resources he uses for his present artistic inspiration3. A philosophical Analysis of Nature and Representation in the Work of Zadok Ben David (Hegel, Spinoza4, Adorno, the Concept of Space, Nature and illusion Explained) As with many of the public projects Zadok Ben David has a very restless mind and has the passion to explore the place, making dreams and utopias, rather
The paper-cutting or Papier Coupe is the ancient art of Mongolian people and the community of the northern herdsmen that created the paper-cutting. The art has long and wonderful progress history. People as an art in their daily life expressed their aesthetic perspective with the most simple and sincere feelings and demonstrate their colourful inner world and optimist outlook on life. Each piece is hand cut by the craftsman to a three dimensional effect and in many occasion is framed to show off the shadows. The silhouette makes a reality and illusion of the elements that become recognizable by our experience to see, by the icon or symbols that we are use to see and handle and a illusion because plays with the deepness and round effects of the elements in composition in which, some contents reflect the everyday scenes of people cultivating the land and animals roaming freely. The Papier Coupe has played an important role in China’s Folk Arts and the among the many symbolic elements are some of the most common pattern that still today are been produce and related to believes and religious cults; “surplus year after year” and “Deer and crane welcomes spring” praying symbols for a favourable weather, “Hamuer Pattern” the luck symbol, the “Panchang Pattern” the solidarity and long life and the “10,000 words picture” that means good luck in four seasons and wheel of life. The discovery of gold and silver fretwork decorations unearthed from Xianbei Tomb in Northern Wei, shows decoration patterns on yurt of herdsmen, leather bags, bowing clothes, arrow holders, saddles and felt embroidery made by Mongolians as well as handcrafts on their clothes are the basic reflection of fretwork consciousness of paper-cutting art.
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Blackfield, 2007–09, black view Painted stainless steel and sand, site-specific Installation in Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, photo Gene Ogami
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than be involved in environmental statements and manifestos. Perhaps we have to see the other side of the idea of meaning and representation of nature which, Theodor W. Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer explain in the concept of the disenchantment of nature in their essay Dialectic of Enlightenment in which they proposed as a historical process whereby we have come to find natural things meaningless and completely intelligible by the repetition and the influx of information. However, Adorno and Horkheimer believe that modernity not only rests on disenchantment but also tends to re-enchant nature, because it encourages us to think that its institutions derive from, and are anticipated and prefigured by, nature and artworks which generate an alternative form of enchantment which is critical of modernity and its domination of nature. This form of re-enchantment finds natural beings to be mysteriously meaningful because they embody histories of immeasurable suffering. This experience engenders guilt and antipathy to human domination over nature5. We recall the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in history – April 1986 at Chernobyl nuclear power facility in the Ukraine – which, we expected would have become a barren wasteland for many years to come but it seems that trees, bushes, and vines have overtaken abandoned streets and surroundings. If plants survive there despite chronic radiation exposure it can help to understand why Ben David optimistically has engineered a plantation and botanical exhibition inside a gallery space. Here we have an example of the idea that reality watches over fiction. The cluster of clouds of radioactive material in the countryside surrounding
“A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the same things follow one another”. Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws and rules of nature”. Baruch Spinoza Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt, 5 volumes (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925, 1972, volume 5, 1987) 5 According to Adorno, the domination of man’s natural environment made possible by controlling man’s inner nature leads to a limitation of the human horizon to self-preservation and power. In addition, the justifying idea of a divine commandment to subdue the earth and to have dominion over all creatures reduces the sensitivity of civilized humans for the conditions of their violent domination of nature organized in and by society. Finally, the internalized violent domination of nature also facilitates the use of force in social life. Adorno’s hypothesis with regard to a psychology of civilization means that man’s brute force against nature encourages him to use violence against other human beings as well. This radical thesis defended by Adorno must be differentiated from the traditional critique of culture, particularly from its German version. Therefore I propose the term critique of culture as civilization theory (zivilisationstheoretische 4
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Chernobyl today has shown radioactive substances. There are deformities in local wildlife and plants that are officially off-limits, although despite the devastation, local flora flourishes. It seems as if the plants are protecting themselves from Chernobyl’s low-level radiation, but no one knows how the protein changes translate into survival, or if they have been passed on to the plants’ offspring. Perhaps Adorno knowing these elements of consideration will have had the opportunity to reconsider his theory as a radical example of reality that could give us some future. We are in the era of technology and computers science where young people can see nature on TV programs or with 3D technology but nature itself is more beautiful. Craftsmanship in representation helps to unravel how emotions compare and how a small flowering plant could be a model for a wild appreciation. We have both increased and suppressed our capacity to react and socialize with the wild, accelerating the loss of touch with nature. The spectacle of leaves changing colour and falling to the ground has long inspired poets and have entranced children. The mechanism of our relationship with nature is still very close to our animal nature and our architecture. The ground breaking experience of scientific discoveries and the voyages of exploration into the unknown are similar to the idea of Einstein and the concept presented in the relativity principle when he enunciated that gravity bends time and space. Ben David is planting 188 thousand trees in a space that is as narrow as a house. It is a tangible concept that has more to do with illusion than reality as is the case of the illusion and magical reality in the work of Ben David. He puts miniature sculptures in a gallery; he paints trees with different colours; he puts every thing in order and displays many plants. He loves plants and we do too, but also we see it as art. This idea of representation of nature and the aesthetic mechanism Ben David visually controls is equal to the admiration for plants and their act of survival. Ben David’s goal, aside from improving our understanding of nature, is to alert the spectator to the uneasiness, beauty, aesthetics of representation, and the misguided concept of order regardless of whether we are scientists of ordinary spectators. In the work of Ben David’s Blackfield the plants are 5 centimetres high, a giant sycamore that should be 35 meters tall is here next to a buttercup that in nature is 25 centimetres tall. A plant is not a plant but still there is a plant representation that we can see in front of us. Within a species, plants show a surprising amount a variation in shape or form and colour and also in behaviour when it relates to the world around them. These findings sort out some pleasing inconsistencies in how species interacts in this installation work. Anyone looking at this installation would see mutualism and how the structure of the display makes a difference to an ideal model of nature. It is an
Kulturkritik) in order to characterize Adorno’s approach. Man’s domination of the nature that has been suppressed into the collective unconscious is considered by Adorno as a congenital defect of industrialized, i.e. Western civilization. In Karsten Fi Scher Humboldt – University, Berlin In the beginning wathe murder: destruction of nature and interhuman violence in Adorno’s critique of culture. http://www.jcrt.org/archives/06.2/fischer.pdf Or ©2005 Karsten Fischer. All rights reserved. Fischer, Karsten. “In the Beginning Was the Murder: Destruction of Nature and Interhuman Violence in Adorno’s Critique of Culture”. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory vol. 6 no. 2 (Spring 2005): 27–38. http://www.jcrt.org/archives/06.2/fischer.pdf
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example of a fictitious garden appraising and utilising the gallery space. Ben David becomes the naturalist as his work researches new worlds and themes, suggesting and going beyond the normal installation. He has an interest in manipulating the idea of plants, their use and their capacity to attract our attention and much more. His installation, Blackfield, makes sense as an example of splendour, arrangement and “order” in nature. Ben David doesn’t classify the plants, he arranges them and puts them in the space; sometimes the plant is the same 100 times repeated only changing in colour or in size by 1 cm. You can enjoy nature even if you don’t know the names of the plants or trees. He goes for the plant family serialisation without making individual differences between them opposite to the realm were plants are actually in control of the long-studied mutualism within themselves. The installation makes a general assessment of the principle of accumulation, repetition, sequence, and their interconnection, which adds clarity to nature representation. The first analysis of the installation reveals a surprisingly complex idea of primitive plants on display, how they relate or diverge from each other. The sculptures suggest the idea of flowering and colour fluctuation as well as reacting with the spectators and their own experiences. With intense scrutiny we perceive some evolved features; the sequencing of the natural world. The relative simplicity of the sculpture display, the lacking of trees roots, seeds and flowers typical of most land plants help to reveal how plants made their way onto land: symbolically by magic. Shrubs, flowers and trees must protect themselves from animals and man. Theirs is a constant struggle to find enough light and nutrient. These natural stresses are never shown in Ben David’s sculpture combinations. They are swapped between similar elements, change sequences, a sort of iconic symbol, and a glyph of nature in a small scale. Like humans, plants evolved from water and represent about the same evolutionary distance as that of fish and humans. That means we need to understand the leap from water to land and our closeness to nature. It seems likely that our ancestors underwent whole-genome duplication early in its history, to reveal clues about how plants accomplished the transition to land. The first surprise in this installation work is the abundance of plants and the multiplication of species evolved as an additional background, adding colour the suggesting a magic world that it has grown independently from the artist’s hand. Even more surprisingly these plants have as many recombinations in nature as in their gallery environment. Ben David memorised or mirrored the increased levels of forms and structures in nature as he is interested in this homologous combination. We see in this work just a fraction of plants that we would expect to see in a classic collection or in a botanical album. The work made has an unusual transmission of order by sequence, the structure is against the chaos and the display is not simply a case of a sequence to create a happening. It is a higher level exercise showing the possibility of fostering a utopia symbol of nature and using the iconic element of it. The changes in the installation work, which moves from one place to another, from one city to the next, are a boost to the idea that promotes recombination and assists the artist into making variations. In particular in this case the plant plays centre stage in the installation work that gives us the opportunity to assert the present of multiples views6. Magic Realism or Utopia in the work of Zadok Ben David Looking for hermeneutical theories about specific environmental
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interpretations presented in this installation we can assume that the many differences in nature could be resolved by a fundamental agreement about shape and structure. The installation work goes behind the scientific points and general plan advanced by deconstruction, archaeology, genealogy, phenomenology and the varieties of hermeneutics of those concepts. The objective of the Magic Realism conveys to us a new concept of the everyday world we live in. The artist may choose unusual points of view, mysterious juxtapositions or common objects presented in uncanny ways. However, everything we see here is within the realm of possibility. We could argue over whether or not our world has some sort of “magic reality-objectivity” with the connotation that we can discern and use the installation work and the sculptures in order to non-arbitrarily plan and build as well as we can understand7. This basic tension between those who deconstructed and those who tried to retrieve original meanings could emerge. Clearly, it is crucial to understand this difference and to choose how to proceed in regard to what is at stake in understanding Ben David’s work. Nietzsche believes human nature is just a euphemism for inertia, cultural conditioning, and what we are before we make something of ourselves. A few exceptional humans are the creators, who, having subjected themselves to prevailing norms, then break with them and explore new territory, thus “raising themselves above the all-too-human mass”. The works of Ben David are in contempt of the concept of ignoring issues so important for all of us. Parts of the tropical rain forest have been left inhabited, dried up and turned into grasslands as it is the case of large parts of the Amazonia in Brazil which gives us thought about what side we are on. With the coming of the exhibition Blackfield to Italy – Turin we recall the existence of a botanical garden as early as 1560 in Turin which became the botanical garden of the “Valentino”8. In the age of Renaissance an interest in naturalism resulted in an emphasis in drawing from life and nature, and the intimacy of the subject and a greater accuracy were seen by the artists of that era. Examples are the herbals collections of Brunfels and Fuchs, although by no means primarily botanical artists, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) and Albrecht Durer (1471 – 1528) produced extraordinary drawings of plant subjects. This period also saw the advances of gardens and the evolution from a plot of vegetables and herbs to elaborate outdoor collections of plants combined
6 See Interpretations on behalf of place: environmental displacements ... by Robert Mugerauer 7 The Age of the World View* Metaphysics reflects on the nature of the existent and on the nature of truth. Metaphysics lays the foundation of an age by giving it the basis of its essential form through a particular analysis of the existent and a particular conception of truth. This basis dominates all the phenomena which distinguish the age. Conversely, it must be possible to recognize the metaphysical basis in these phenomena through sufficient reflection on them. Reflection is the courage to question as deeply as possible the truth of our own presuppositions and the exact place of our own aims. Among the essential phenomena of modern times we must count science. A phenomenon with the same degree of importance is mechanical… “This translation first appeared in Measure, 2 (1951), 269–84. Heidegger’s original is included as “Die Zeit des Welibildes” in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1963), pp. 69–89. P 341 Martin Heidegger translated by Marjorie Grene 8 See Orto Botanico del Valentino Turin
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with architecture. The physics gardens spread through Europe and become a household of the feudal classes that increased the appetite for such extensive courtyards in their castles. Collections of exotic and native plants became an aristocratic pursuit. Beautiful herbariums appeared celebrating and cataloguing these collections. Most were etchings and watercolours and include works by Daniel Rabel (1578 – 1637), Nicholas Robert (1614 – 85) and Claude Aubriet (1665 – 1742) among many others9. Understanding Nature Evolution and the Exploration of the Artistic Force of Representation Knowledge about nature has increased and has continued an irregular pattern of growth until the present when technology has brought about rapid changes and scientific advances. Natural life has become more observed and complex in its social organisations and, at the same time, the scope of research has increased. Botanical research gives us the opportunity to make advances in science in our favour and it plays an important part with the application of medicinal plants. Industrialisation brought about new classes who had an instinctive sense of altruism and exploration and expanded the community of the Grand Tour era, bringing about the discovery of the existence of primitive organism of the vegetable world which became the pillars and foundation of today’s modern ecology movement. Human knowledge today is the result of layers upon layers of innovative thought followed by assimilation, followed by general acceptance, followed by the introduction of new innovative thought about the perception of nature. The memory – “the layering” – process of interpretation of our natural world involves a lot more than just our sense of seeing. The layering that has occurred with regard to human development, the memory of nature, falls into a special category. Throughout human history, one society after another has erected elaborate social constraints to control and channel the instincts trying to govern the community behaviour and the collective memory, which we inherited from our primitive ancestors. Most social systems have tried to keep culture and history memory suppresses by terror, and their social or collective memory committed to upholding the state or the status quo. High value is attached to preventing this collective memory from interacting until they are properly subdued into a slave society, i.e. the complex of authority. Within the human psyche there is a strong underlying relationship between nature and the human urge to belong to it. I strongly suspect the tension generated between our cultural interest and the dictated constraints against a free rein of nature constitutes today a major force that is an increasingly complex and sophisticated love and togetherness for nature. Past, Present and Future in the Interpretation of Nature Ben David’s work comes into that creative impulse of exploration. The creation of an illusion of life forms expresses his interpretation of nature and thereby influences our perception. Humans with their extraordinary mental powers have other options other animals do not have to see the difference between the reality and representation. In addition to the act of consciously knowing and the accumulative layers of scientific knowledge and experience which constantly influence our teachings, writings, inventing, exploring and
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collecting, Ben David gives us his artistic and personal act of meaning and understanding which also increases our perceptions of the real world10. Ben David is a force of pure creativity. It seems to me that one of the noblest attributes he has is the clever manipulation of various elements and his ability to grasp the intimate factors and rapport so close to our animal instincts of observation. Memory or “layering” is basic human nature and adding to it, over and over, is what has brought our species to its present state. Contemporary works of art has its roots in the foundations of artistic interpretation of nature. Ben David could argue that we need to keep on adding new layers of aesthetic values and representation while regarding that the conditions of our historical evolution are almost parallel to plants, but unfortunately remembering that extinction is part of the process of evolution. The process of physical changes to man occurred over tens of thousands of generations that made possible the eventual development of vocal organs and new brain patterns. Speech became possible. These and other changes in our ancestral physiology changed the ways in which we obtained food, avoided predators, and organized ourselves socially. We were off on a new kind of evolutionary track and in which Zadok Ben David has dedicated one of his famous works called Theory and Evolution. Blackfield is a direct statement about earth; from the wandering of the artist’s mind comes this imaginary element creating a utopia. There is an explicit search for a magical formula in this installation which centres on the causality and rupture of nature. Blackfield is due, in part, to Ben David’s accidental encounter with the literature of the age of exploration and the illustrations of the plants and fauna, which sparked his curiosity. The artist’s creative and thoughtful force took this adventure in a new representation of nature as a sculpture work. In these uncertain times it is especially important that creative individuals are capable of articulating new ways of introducing representation as a way forward in the artistic creation. Ben David’s work emerges as credible as he is firmly planted in the tradition of exploration. He adds a new layer of knowledge to us; nothing less than a new layer of understanding beauty and ethical representation of nature which gives us the power of a new mindset or global view that can be grafted into our western representation, using our memory as a tool to grasp meaning in his work, the essentia. The progressive humanist view of his work is that it is imaginative and innocent in its intentions. The work can be seen for what it is; the foundation block upon which the entire installation is based: the past, present and future. You are looking in this work for a new world order view of nature. The leaves, the trees, the plants let you confidently seek ways in the art of meaning, to be more than a spectator, to travel into a new concept, and to accept a universal presence of looking at the work of art but also been part of it. At the same time in this work, you can not perceive any ideological, religious, and philosophical stand. The humanism in Ben David is in the discovery of the idea of the wilderness. Perhaps this work has a singular advantage over many of its preceding
9 Leonhart Fuchs 1542, John Ray (1686 – 1704), Carl Linnaeus, James Cook, Alexander Von Humboldt, Aime Bonpland and many others.
Foucault developed through two stages with complementary views. First, he worked out the idea that discourse is not about objects in the sense of referring to them as actual things; rather, discourse constitutes things – all objects and meanings. Systems of discourse, even if without deep or grounded meaning, are intelligible because they have systematic structures. Modes of discourse go through historical changes and. most interestingly, discontinuous transformations.
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Blackfield, 2007–09, colour view Painted stainless steel and sand, site-specific Installation in Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, photo Gene Ogami
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sculptures with it is optimistic future, and this optimism is based on the view of the past as a present. His sculptures have acquired, and shaped in that process, new attributes of representation. Looking at the work of Ben David is a real competition of concepts and an open battle raging as to which one of these concepts could come out ahead. With this installation Zadok Ben David gives us a vision of nature, which could be labelled “a model” or “a prototype”, in which, he animates shapes and conveys them into a formidable sculpture/installation. He has consolidated the power of expression in his work, despite numerous setbacks while placing and imitating nature. His key position is to ensure that his environmental example, nature, benefits from the interest of the spectator and the use of its forms come to us as fresh and tactile as possible. This may sound like an absurd caricature of nature, but not when you look at what he has actually accomplished with Blackfield. To define Ben David’s forms, we need to apply an earthly language but to explain that neatly camouflaged element in his work deep in the sculpture display there is another meaning: the concept of the illusion. The outstanding historical example of magic art is Ben David’s great power; to advance other parts of his grand design of nature and doing so he leads us to diminish our arrogance and hubris. See Kierkegaard theory about perception. Ben David’s own vision rests in his understanding of the use of contemporary art representation. He has given us a vast installation work using sculpture techniques to communicate the issues of illusion and reality and he feeds them to the spectator. It is a contemporary work that is closely influenced by nature itself. The Artefact and the Symbol in the Sculpture Blackfield Ben David’s work is praised for its absence of time; he has focused on what he perceived as a space drawing without aesthetic persuasion from different generations and different cultural legacies. Perhaps it could be said that he has inherited much from his strong admiration for his father’s work; his story telling as jewel making; Zadok Ben David the go – between two generations. The abstract artistic platform of Zadok Ben David was his artistic début in London three decades ago, in which his work first received critical attention. The association of his sculpture in that period was with the contemporary works. An expected indication by the art critics was of influences and coincidences in the dimension of the work, and the idea of an art devoid of meaning which was interpreted in a number of ways just because there was a lack of a contemporary reference. Ben David’s work was intended as a personal signature of a young artist. At the time he wanted to create his own work against the establishment and nobody anticipated the applied flair or finesse of those first crafted forms and the series of natural elements would evolved into a ground breaking representation of nature. The chosen elements of his sculpture today are done according to a predetermined system/structure generated by both design and chromatic harmonies. The resulting scheme rarely conforms to familiar or conventional ways of making a pictorial surface or follows the common optical rhythms of nature. In the installation work Blackfield, the single sculptures contradict any tendency to have spatial depth, yet, at the same time, impact vividly, hypnotically, on the viewer given the overall feeling of a depicted surface, and a carefully studied pattern11. The reference to Indian shadow theatre. The idiosyncratic fusion of representation in his work is linked but also describes ancient systems of divination from scientific hypotheses or from mathematics calculations, and astronomy observations, all with references
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to ancient ideas about nature and representation. We could relate Blackfield to ancient cosmologies which are potently manifest in such mesmerizing monumental sculpture work, a bewildering conglomerate, glyphs, symbols, signs, emblems, and interwoven elements of nature into a unique statement. Determined according to quirkily cryptic calibrations these abstruse thematic forms do not form the basis for an exegesis and are far from conveying information or a strictly scientific knowledge. His enigmatic pictograms form an armature for exercising cognitive and distinct eclectic systems of a propositional truth by unfolding the meaning of nature. We witness intuitive poetics; a delicate structure which prevails over the sculpture “gesture” or the communication of a particular meaning. For the content there is more than a pictorial sense, there is an exercise on formally resolving an aesthetically unified whole, rather than on decoding the individual plant systems referenced within. A fundamental aesthetic philosophy cannot be reconciled on dualistic opposition as they are elements of syncretised introduction and of philosophical, cosmological and scientific speculations. Cohesion nonetheless emerges from the Blackfield sculpture installation that is the truth or the famous alétheia12 and that gives the importance to the work. 11 India has a very long and rich tradition of Shadow theatre. Shadow theatre According to many scholars is a performing art, (which is close to puppetry, but differs from it in the sense that while in puppet theatre the audience directly sees the puppet figures, in shadow theatre they only see the shadow cast on the screen) originated in India. Reference to shadow theatre is found in the Tamil classic Shilappadikaaram. Many Western Indologists such as Pischel, Luders and Wintemitz are of the opinion that the well-known Sanskrit drama iviahaanaataka was originally written as a play for the Shadow Theatre. This art form is, thus, at least one thousand years old. Apparently it went to Southeast Asia, Turkey and other places from India. Shadow theatre is prevalent performed in the states of Orissa, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kamataka. In the shadow theatre forms of the first three states, the shadows are black and white while those from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kamataka are multi-coloured. The shadow theatre in Orissa is known as Raavana Chhaya or shadow of Ravana. It is rather strange that in this form, while the story is based on Rama, the theatre itself is named after Ravana. The shadow theatre in Maharashtra is known as Camdyaachaa Bahulye, meaning figures made of leather. It is also known as Chitra Marathigaru. Here also the themes are largely drawn from the legend of Rama. In Kamataka there are two styles of shadow theatre, both known as Togalu gombeatta. One style uses very large size figures ranging from 1 – 1.5 metres and the other style uses smaller figures ranging from six inches to two and a half feet. The figures are made of goatskin, which is first treated to translucency and then stencilled and coloured. The themes are drawn from Ramayana, Mahabharata and other Puranic episodes. Shadow theatre. There is a light source and a screen and in between the manipulator inserts the flat figures by lightly pressing them on the screen so that a sharp shadow is formed. Usually, the figures in the shadow theatre are made of leather. They are carefully stencilled so that their shadows suggest their clothing, jewellery and other accoutrements. Some of the figures have jointed limbs which, when manipulated, give the appearance of beautiful moving shadows.
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Goethe emphasized that perhaps the greatest danger in the transition from seeing to interpreting is the tendency of the mind to impose an intellectual structure that is not really present in the thing itself: “How difficult it is...to refrain from replacing the thing with its sign, to keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with the word”13. The imagery is subsumed into an all-over field of interlocking, repeating shapes conjured from a delicately inflected plants found elsewhere, which may at times include calculating and deciphering more visually oriented models of nature. One reacts to the optically charged chromatic patterns and juxtapositions, or the physical presence of nature representation, in which the focus is also the diagram and structure of a work that convey simultaneously its syncretism and the aesthetic beauty. Further, we could attest that the spectator rarely goes beyond appreciating the aspirations of his distinctive dialogue towards a redemptive understanding of a metaphysical engagement with the poetics of illusion, which reside more in a pictorial rightness than in a careful stage iconography and perhaps using the “subterfuge” (Hintergehen) or “trick”, which, not accidentally, he uses extensively in his work. Many other elements are eloquent and distinctive in the work of Blackfield, which ultimately depends neither on its ostensible idea of nature theme nor on the efforts of the public at decoding an aesthetic illusion. By contrast, certain committed iconography gives way to analysis, which is devoted to unravelling occluded systems and offers illuminating accounts, without necessarily altering an appreciation of nature accomplishment. The conceptualised presence of the sculpture is as an aesthetic object relation, implying a characteristic and complex interplay of objective and subjective components. In the methodology in the construction and research of Blackfield Ben David also drew on ancient cultures. He situated it outside the era of a contemporary umbrella to move in very different modes of primitive forms. He is always reflecting his prevailing trend for Magic Realism and incisively compares the structure of reality and the subject/concept into a stylistically abstract thought in which he becomes someone who investigates into the past for signs and symbols that will spring to life in the present as cryptic, though vivid, bearers of meaning of Blackfield. To advance in his tradition of working out his sculpture representation he has lucidly mapped interpretative positions of ideal sections of forest and plants, one that could reflect current philosophical inquiry falling away from constricted signification. What is at stake is not the accessibility to the work in detail but the strangeness of these repetitive systems, and hence their embodiment of an experience. Creating the relation between the meanings of the universe that is the basis for science and the desire for aesthetic sense. The self position in the spanning of his work, owes something to the peculiarities of his artistic upbringing, the period of itinerant travelling, the accumulation of formed collection of memories, layers of them and the guidance that eventually allows him the bequeathed modernist interpretation of an aesthetic culture. Following on from his discoveries, his fascination with the diagram of plants in key works, from signs and literature, the drawn systems of famous botanical illustrators and the informed echoes and memories of landscape has led him to create these cultural artefacts.
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The privilege of a speculative quest for meaning has propelled and beguiled his views making his uncannily resonant work create a constant engagement with the duality of reality and fiction. He limned the parameters of a vision that would tenaciously, even obsessively, explore over, and over in some extraordinary installation works that play with presence and illusion. Once we are captivated by the installation work, it is arguably irrelevant whether we have exact answers to elucidate the notions of shapes and forms. The Grimm Brothers’ fables have entered into popular folklore and their concept-ideas are the simple products of a popular imagination, to the great enjoyment of children and adults alike. Reading their stories, we become immersed in the existence of fantastic worlds and meanings that can be summarized in a brief moral which made the phantasy14 and oddities a reality. It is probable that we would not have gone far beyond a new viewpoint if the logic of their method or story telling had not allowed us to walk into the unexpectedly openings and the many paths that are constantly bristling with the fantastic obstacles and questions in the sequence of events. Their great merit is to have reflected their country almost as a covered immense forest, bushes as enchanted woodland conveyed in their tales, and to have taken the risk of following almost a magic transcription made with incredible fervour in which the ancient tales of discovery is no less evident than the exactitude of description15. From the Ancient World to the Present. The Ways of Making an Objective World The traditions and techniques in the western world of the modelled specimen, more familiar to us in natural history museums, are produced in multiples of objects or forms which are allowed to betray their identity as casts or replicas as they are conveyed like identical figures. Typically they relate as much to botanical forms as to prototypes for their subjectivity (with few exceptions). Although familiar and mundane the subjects in Blackfield become imbued with a highly charged character that lifts them from the realm of the banal to take on an iconic even archetypal status. Ben David in many of his monumental
“alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for ‘truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity’ 13 Goethe: Scientific Studies, p. 275
“Infantile feelings and phantasies leave, as it were, their imprints on the mind, imprints that do not fade away but get stored up, remain active, and exert a continuous and powerful influence on the emotional and intellectual life of the individual” (Klein, 1975:290) We should make a differentiation with the debate of Adorno and Freud as the paper refers to the origin and hatred in the Semitism. We just employ the concept. 15 Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, dramatize the vicissitudes of the creation of an aesthetic experience (1898). In the reading of this story both the awareness of transformational object traces and the failure of the omnipotent object are evoked by the permanent gap structured in the text. If the focusing on the formal characteristics of the text acts as container of the anxiety created by the no transformational changes of meaning, the aesthetic event is granted: the relation is to the object in itself without a peremptory need to solve the unsolvable enigma. But, if the reading of the ambiguous text evokes degrees of anxiety which are not contained by the formal characteristics of the story, then the reader is compelled to be himself the transformer and to create a univocal version of the story’s meaning. from Priel, B. (1994). The Dialectics of Aesthetic Experience: An Object Relations Persp... Psychoanal. Contemp. Thought, 17:547 – 562.
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projects creates this impact achieved by subtle shifts in form and scale, and through the stylization assistance on the symmetry, the formality, and a multiplication on a referential proportion. The pristine forms of the elements on display demonstrate simultaneous familiarity and distance of a symbolically worked image that it is all too recognisable in motifs and it is tested for its core of credibility and placed in a new, contemporary context in the installation work. Not surprisingly then, the objects Ben David produces are neither fetishes nor trophies, relics from another life, but carefully constructed artefacts devised to act as catalysts, as their singularity is measured neither by notions of uniqueness nor by the idiosyncrasies of the botanical accuracy, they are drawn or cut directly from the realm of nature books and encyclopaedias (the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers) and photo etched and painted by hand, where affectively tends to have a mutability with reference to nature works. Indeed, he often chooses objects that are loaded with meaning in themselves, but they are not biographically accurate and have a general significance at the same time, which is valuable in order to be comprehensible. The traditional Islamic artists and Arab craftsmen have make jewels, windows, doors, buildings and decorated surfaces of everything from modest artefacts to monumental architecture with elaborate geometric patterns as we could see in the great wonders of Yemen. The Koran forbids the representation of people and animals, but this in no way hinders creativity in those countries that have taking representation further as we could also appreciate in Granada and Cordoba in Spain. Ben David’s father a top jewellery-maker from Yemen has followed the pattern of many artisans in that part of the world, that generate intricate patterns by combining, duplicating, and interlacing simple shapes, commonly the circle and square to help produce the work in a metal sheet. The seemingly infinite geometries surprise and delight the senses, especially as architectural screens. As screens, patterns become even more complex, interacting with vistas and manipulating light and shadow. In India, this window treatment is called Jali, and has become a salient feature of the country’s architecture. Hand-carved out of a single slab of stone, the geometric mesh of Jali responds to a number of cultural and environmental conditions by providing privacy and security, filtering light, and permitting the circulation of air. The fretwork also works as a unifying element in architecture, an approach Herbert J.M. Ypma describes as “ornate order”. The Jali colonnade at Akbar’s tomb may at first appear to follow a strict geometric pattern; in reality, the total design is actually random, with each screen containing a unique abstract pattern. Together the screens produce a feeling of infinite growth, framed and thus contained within a series of regularly spaced, identical arches. Ympa describes the tension occurring between the free flowing detail and the repetitive structural elements as a “combination of chaos and restraint”. Ympa also claims that this ordering principle of “asymmetry within symmetry” influenced renowned modernists Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn”16. Yet strangely seductive, this images of plants and flowers fixes itself ineradicably in the mind as if it were an emanation of the mesmerizing forms imprint in the suppressed regions of the mind and similarly, its indelibly as if enunciating what was previously known but never acknowledged, a revisited garden of nature. European accounts dating from the Renaissance recorded the phenomenon
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of nature in literature from the antiquity and irrespective of scientific verification of its authenticity there was an almost blind belief in nature. In that way Ben David’s work rests on the power of the image which resides in the veracity of these embroidered accounts, the resemblance, variations, and repetition. It is the measure of vérité that he uses a tempered realism in preference to naturalism; veracity in this instance should be gauged in relation to inner truth rather than by standards of mimesis. The profiles are the near symmetry of replicated and duplicated forms, and the almost overpowering scale, together with the hieratic geometry of their configuration imbued in his work with a potency far more eloquent than would be possible with a merely lifelike version of the plant. The forms thrust forward towards the spectator in an epiphany encounter that is as unsettling to the spirit as it is challenging to the experience of seeing. The world has many cultural concepts and standards for us to determine the purpose of the sculpture model proposed by Zadok Ben David. It is perhaps our close contacts with theories of evolution in representation across the scientific world which provides us with the tools of analysis. I do not endorse a preference for one theory nor am I bias towards a single interpretation. The ontology of the work per sé should allow for alternative interpretations of the installation Blackfield. Over the years, Ben David has developed a fascination with the representation of human evolution, scientific observations and the presence of the human body in art. There is also the awareness of elements that we observed every day, like the domestic animal, the everyday objects we use and, of course, those elements we tend to collect. He is intensively aware of time and movement within and through his representation. His work can be seen as part of a long tradition of experimentation whereby the making of his work becomes both an instrument of scientific record and a tool for aesthetic exploration. The viewer effectively becomes part of the forest, knotted by the movement and representation of an utopian Garden of Eden, Ben David invites us to travel as Gulliver, through the infinity of his work, witnessing the pure representation of an incredible array of colourful realm of plants which are planted in situ and allowing us to be spectators of a great forest, only occasionally perhaps finding a moment of clarity within the mass garden displayed in Blackfield.
See working paper. http://intypes.cornell.edu/expanded.cfm?erID=107
Bibliography Blunt, Wilfrid and Stern, William T., The Art of botanical illustration. New Edition, revised and enlarged. Antique Collectors’ Club in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1994. Buchanan, Handasyde. Nature into art: A treasury of great natural history books, Weidenfield & Nicolson,London 1979. Rix, Martyn. The Art of the plant world: The great botanical illustrators and their work. Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 1980. Saunders, Gill. Picturing plants: An analytical history of botanical illustration. Berkeley, University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1995. Sitwell, Sacheverell. Great flower books, 1700–1900. The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1990. Guarino, N. Concepts, Attributes, and Arbitrary Relations: Some Linguistic and Ontological Criteria for Structuring Knowledge Bases. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 1992. Takagaki, K. A Formalism for Object-based Information Systems Development. Doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia, 1990.
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Evolution and Theory, 1997 Installation, painted aluminium 2 cm thick and sand, site-specific photo John C Steenwinkel
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High Noon, 2006–2007 Installation, painted stainless steel, site-specific, photo David Schienman
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