Longitudinal, transverse, thick and thin, straight or curved lines appear on ceramic works in the first solo exhibition of Lilach Visnavski. In her work, the artist takes the seemingly sim graphic form of the line and adds to it a dimension of material and motion. In a combination of clay and porcelain with cotton, wood, iron and glass, she kneads and detracts, rolls and stretches, creating coded bodies.

Out of the desire to go deeper and explore the identity of clay through the language of coding, she produces dozens of panels varying in their material composition, simulating a huge digital barcode, hanging from the ceiling in the gallery space. In order to keep the rules of the grid she created, she produces another body of work that is something between the image we know from television screens of the past and a typographical chart. In a humorous reference, she calls them “The End”, alluding to the background buzzing sound that indicated the end of the broadcasting day, as against a circular communal motion in which she sees growth.

She examines the same circular motion in the form of texture. Here she examines the effect of the rotary motion and presents the circular lines, as if to say that the lines also have a dimension of softness, inclusion and continuity.

The series of tallitot (prayer shawls) made of porcelain was inspired by current times, when she had to take part in the funerals of the war victims. That situation led her to take the typographic language and use it to sculpt a body of work that brings to light the straight lines that distinguish the different communities in Israeli society – diversity alongside a common destiny.

The placement of the works in the gallery is unusual, in itself producing a kind of restlessness, which seeks to take the visitor out of the formality and the clear order of lines that produce a constant grid of horizontal and vertical. Between the works hanging from the ceiling and those hanging on the wall or placed on the floor, another space is created, which is not fixed, calling one to go beyond the lines.

The exhibition is an invitation to observe a coding language in clay. It is an invitation to pay attention to the tension between the straight line and the circular line, to the movement and sound it produces between its role as a closing and delimiting line and its free appearance.  Through various combinations, it is possible to observe a grid that started with a line, continued in motion and created a language.

Curator: Michal Krasny