Shony Rivnay and Ran Slavin “Larger than Love”
TEMP Art Space
This event has ended.
TEMP Art Space presents the New York debut of Larger than Love, a collaboration between Tel Aviv-based artists Shony Rivnay and Ran Slavin. Curated by Tim Goossens after its premiere at the Berlin Biennale in 2012, at the heart of this exhibition is Shony Rivnay’s monumental cloud-shaped installation Ehevuni, a floating sculpture filled with air that nearly encompasses the entire 2,000 square feet of TEMP’s first floor. The surface of the fabric is completely covered with the handwriting of the artist. Executed in the course of multiple months in his Tel Aviv studio, the work displays various sizes and repetitive patterns of the same Hebrew word – “ehevuni.”
“Ehevuni” can be translated as “you must love me,” a request that nears demand. The obsessive repetition of the word rendered in an intricate and precise format such as calligraphy, addresses the artist’s need for embrace and acceptance both professionally and in his personal life. Little by little we learn that there is a fine balance between daring to take up space and being too overwhelming. Ehevuni conveys a delicate dance amongst both ideologies and the artist’s plight between the two.
Larger than Love also features an immersive sound-installation Soundtrack, created by Ran Slavin that offers a hypnotic and haunting response to the compulsive message of Rivnay’s sculpture. The visitor will discover different layers of the sound piece while making a journey around the sculpture. Slavin describes:
The Cardigans “Love Fool” track popped into my head as I was creating a soundtrack for the installation. With the initial tone of the soundtrack being so eerie coupled with the overall darkness of Shony’s work, I thought a loop from the pop song would offer a sweet counterpoint. I think the overall composition reflects a certain insecurity, being laughed at and applauded in all of the wrong places without being able to finish even a short musical sentence.
Shony Rivnay is a Tel Aviv-based interdisciplinary artist working in various media, including sculpture, painting and video with a longstanding exhibition practice. Solo exhibitions include Tavi Dresdner Gallery, Tel Aviv (2008, 2010) and he participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide including With Justice in His Art He Will live, Underground Prisoners Museum (2008); My own Body, Art in Israel, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2010); Groupshow, Center of Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv (2010); and Mapping VIII, a collateral event of the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). He was commissioned to create a special project for Message in a Bottle, Exterritory Art Project, Cyprus (2010) and was invited to HomeBase residency in Berlin (2011–2012).
Ran Slavin is a Tel Aviv-based multidisciplinary visual and sound artist. His work is on the threshold of video art and cinema featuring transcendental themes and dream influenced structures. He has released ten solo records with the following record labels: Crónica, Achim Szepanski’s Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa, Ak Duck, Earsay, Hed Arzi, Nana Discs, and False Ind. Selected solo exhibitions include Givon Gallery, Tel Aviv; Galerija Vartai, Vilnius, Lithuania; Videoformes, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Aalst, Belgium; and numerous screenings and installations worldwide including Mediations Biennale; Polin, Manifesta; Belgium, Museum on the Seam; Jerusalem, Maerzmusic and Transmediale; Berlin, Rencontres Internationales; Madrid-Berlin-Paris, Petah Tikva Art Museum and The Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel. His work has also been featured at the Venice Architecture Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Torino Film Festival, and the 9th International Istanbul Biennial.
Tim Goossens was born and raised in Belgium, moved to Paris to pursue a Masters in Art History at Paris IV- Sorbonne, and a Masters Cum Laude in Museology at the prestigious Ecole du Louvre. Goossens moved to New York in 2006 and was an Assistant Curator at MoMA PS1 until 2010. At MoMA PS1, he curated the group exhibition Between Spaces (2009), and collaborated on major exhibitions including Kenneth Anger (2009) and Greater New York (2010) as well as the acclaimed performance series Saturday Sessions. As an independent curator he has organized exhibitions for the Berlin Biennial, Official Collateral Event, 2012; Ellen Depoorter, Governor’s Island, NY, 2009; Daria Marchik, Kiev, Ukraine, 2009; the major Belgian group show Avec le Temps - In Temps, Robert Miller Gallery, NY, 2009; and RISD Expose, RISD, Providence, 2010. He is currently a Curatorial Advisor at The Clocktower Gallery where he curated the recent group exhibition Dark Paradise with Joan Jonas, Patti Smith, and Zipora Fried, 2013.
Media
Schedule
from May 08, 2013 to May 25, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-05-10 from 20:00 to 22:00