Artist: Alona Rodeh
Exhibition title: DARK AGES 2020
Curated by: Seamus Kealy
Venue: Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria
Date: February 9 – March 31, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Salzburger Kunstverein and Christine König Galerie
Space = darkness; time = termination; and matter of architecture and cities = ruin and ashes.
Arata Isozaki
The title of the exhibition, DARK AGES 2020, refers to an approaching future, one already discernible. Rodeh’s first institutional show in Austria marks a challenging new step in her investigation of light as a cultural and physical entity. Her work draws upon research on cultural (especially modern) uses of light and darkness (especially architectural) as well as current technologies of illumination produced for road works, emergency services, airport runways and more.
With black walls and black flooring throughout the gallery space, one encounters eight sculptural figures installed in a grid-like pattern. These objects resemble hybrids of street lamps, oversized bollards, real size columns, chess pieces, or futuristic totems. A variety of LED lights, as well as reflective materials, products of the booming vehicular light industry, are embedded in these vertical architectonic sculptures. These all illuminate intermittently, along with road-works LED lights placed otherwise throughout the grid, behaving as coded signals communicating with one another. All lighting blinks together in a choreographed chain reaction programmed with a sculpted sound filling the entire space.
DARK AGES 2020 is a part of Alona Rodeh’s ongoing meta-titled “Safe and Sound” project, exploring the histories of off-the-shelf reflective, phosphorus and illumination technologies, their origin in magic, and their total adaptation in safety industries. A culture which has surprisingly strong affiliations with clubbing, fashion, theatre and architecture, Rodeh constructs technological and material performances without performers, set to original sound-tracks, bringing life to objects in their own oriented ontology.
Alona Rodeh (b.1979) is a visual artist based in Tel Aviv and Berlin. Rooted in sculpture, her videos, sound and light installations, photographs, performances, artist publications and more have been exhibited in institutions such as, among others Tranzit SK (2016), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2014), Tel Aviv Museum (2013), CCA Tel Aviv (2013), PlugIn ICA Winnipeg (2012). Temporary and permanent public commissioned artworks of hers exist in Berlin and Tel Aviv. Her performances were shown at Transmediale Festival, Berlin (2016); Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw (2014), Israel Museum Jerusalem (2013) and more. Rodeh works with Christine König Galerie (Vienna) and Rosenfeld Gallery (Tel Aviv), and has had solo presentations at ABC Berlin (2016), Art Cologne (2018), MiArt Milan (2017). She is an MFA graduate (2009) of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Rodeh will have 2 parallel solo shows this upcoming winter/spring season: the first, at Salzburger Kunstverein and the second at Kunstpalias, Erlangen (opening March 15th).
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
Alona Rodeh, DARK AGES 2020, 2019, MDF, Aluminium, Polycarbonate, Plexiglas, LED lights, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound and light design: Alona Rodeh, Rachid Moro, Engineering: Rachid Moro, Construction: Adam Goldstein, Liav Gabay
