Artist: Oren Pinhassi
Exhibition title: Nature Calls
Curated by: Domenico de Chirico
Venue: RIBOT, Milan, Italy
Date: November 29, 2017 – February 10, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and RIBOT
RIBOT is pleased to present Nature Calls curated by Domenico de Chirico, the first solo show in Italy by the artist Oren Pinhassi (Tel Aviv, 1985; he lives and works in New York). It consists of a selection of sculptures and installations exclusively made for this occasion during his stay in Milan.
Oren Pinhassi’s art borrows the language and logic of architecture or, more generally, of building, in order to create complex installations that welcome the viewers into a dimension that is suspended in time, one that in the same way can reflect and question the commonest ideologies and habits.
The presence in the gallery’s rooms of sculptures with apparently familiar forms, encourages the public to establish an investigative relationship with the objects and the world that surrounds it, one where, however, predictable and natural associations are soon disappointed.
Pinhassi submits the materials that he uses to a kind of alchemical process that impedes any precise determination of their identity. And so it comes about that what is soft, once strewn with layers of plaster, becomes hard, what is solid becomes liquid, and what is reassuring becomes disturbing. Such ordinary objects as sponges, towels, mirrors, and urinals, all of which have a close relationship to the body and its care, lose their useful value and are dipped into a space determined by glass walls, above which the artist applies, with an almost painterly gesture, a veil of Vaseline. The structures become semi-opaque and generate an ambiguous relationship between inside and outside, between public and private dimensions, impeding us from understanding clearly where we are: a bathroom, a house, a shelter.
For Nature Calls, Oren Pinhassi has made a special project that reflects all the peculiarities of his language: eight sculptures that, through a wall-mirror following the lines of the exhibition layout, delude the viewers into thinking they can reflect their own image. In this case too, the artist’s choice has fallen on an everyday object, an archetype transformed into a transcendent sculptural form.
Oren Pinhassi (Tel Aviv, 1985; he lives and works in New York). He studied at the Yale School of Art in 2014, and at the Hamidrasha Beit-Berl college in 2011. Solo shows and exhibitions including his work have been held in prestigious public and private galleries, including the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petach-Tikva, Israele, 2017; the Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, 2017; New Capital Projects, Chicago, 2016; 55 Gansevoort, New York, 2015; 83 Pitt Street, New York, 2015; Tempo Rubato, Tel Aviv, 2012. He has also taken part in various residencies: the Shandanken Project at Storm King Sculpture Park, New York, 2016, and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2014. He has, furthermore, been awarded the following prizes: Fannie B. Pardee Prize, Yale School of Art, 2014; The Art Slant Prize, 2014; Shlomo Witkin Prize, 2011 and the Excellence Program Scholarship, Israeli Ministry of Education, 2011.
Oren Pinhassi, Nature Calls, 2017-2018, exhibition view, RIBOT, Milan, Italy
Oren Pinhassi, Nature Calls, 2017-2018, exhibition view, RIBOT, Milan, Italy
Oren Pinhassi, Nature Calls, 2017-2018, exhibition view, RIBOT, Milan, Italy
Oren Pinhassi, Cactus Tree, 2017, egyptian loofah, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, shower curtain, 250 x 229 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Disappointment n. 1, 2017, vetro, acciaio, gesso, juta, sabbia, pigmento, 197,5 x 81 x 68,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Urinal (Milan 1) and Urinal (Milan 2), 2017, vetro, accaio, gesso, juta, sabbia, pigmento, 145x53x45 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Urinal (Milan 1), 2017, vetro, acciaio, gesso, juta, sabbia, pigmento, cm. 145 x 53 x 45
Oren Pinhassi, Urinal (Milan 2), 2017, vetro, acciaio, gesso, juta, sabbia, pigmento, cm. 145 x 53 x 45
Oren Pinhassi, Arm & Hammer, 2017, vetro, acciaio, gesso, juta, sabbia, pigmento, dispenser, tazze coniche di carta, cm. 172 x 42,5 x 46
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS I, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 97,5x22x13 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS II, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 97×28,5×13,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS III, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 97x30x16 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS IV, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 98x29x25,5cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS V, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 97,5×54,5×48 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS VI, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 96,5x 21,5x 21,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS VII, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 96x23x32 cm
Oren Pinhassi, NATURE CALLS VIII, 2017, glass, steel, plaster, burlap, sand, pigment, 99 x 21,5 x 37,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Snake I, 2017, towel, plaster,21×26,5×28,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Snake II, 2017, towel, plaster,21×26,5×28,5 cm
Oren Pinhassi, Snake III, 2017, towel, plaster,19x42x24,5 cm
