Shay Id Alony

Feinberg Projects Gallery’s

29.10.2015 – 12.12.2015

Curator : Yham Hameiri

The objects in the solo show of Shay Id Alony, attempt to investigate and research the subject of the shield and its significance in the psychological, metaphoric and universal contexts, as well as the contemporary Israeli context. Through the objects that Alony creates, he delves into questions of the most basic meaning and development of the primary need for protection and our defense mechanisms, through his use of the shield as a protective force and a symbolic object that in parallel also represent the power of artistic creation.

Achilles is one of the central heroes of Greek mythology, the story of whose deeds and all his brave acts present him as the greatest of Greek military leaders and fighters in the Trojan War. The ‘Shield of Achilles’ is the special shield made for him by the Phaestus, the divine Smith, on which his entire life story is depicted. Achilles uses his shield in his struggles against his great enemy in the war, Hector. The shield cannot grant Achilles everlasting life, but is capable of immortalizing his life. The mortal Achilles is subject to Time which leads to his death, yet the plot of his life has been removed from the course of time, and has become eternal: the shield’s power is the power of artistic creation.The shield is described in Homer’s monumental opus, the Iliad.

The 18th poem of the Iliad concludes with the division known as ‘Shield of Achilles‘. In these lines of poetry, the poet tells of the process of creating the shield, and describes in detail its appearance. The reader, who is swept along while reading the depiction of the shield’s creation and the beautiful drawings that cover it, forgets that Achilles is doomed to die, and that his death is expected from the very moment the Greek hero decided to avenge the death of Patroclus, his beloved companion.That loss and the loss of Achilles’ first shield, which he lent to his friend Patroclus in that battle, and the creation of the need for a second shield – Shield of Achilles, symbolize the loss of inner protection within Achilles’ soul. The story of his deeds adds to and develops these interrelations, between internal and external reality.

Achilles’ Shield exists on two levels:  as a material, visual object, and as a verbal object created by Homer. We have before us a text that describes an object, a literary creation depicting a work of art, a verbal representation of a visual representation – an expression of a visual object, from which stems the tradition of a comparative discourse about the relations between written art and visual art.

In this show, the works relate to the need for protection, and development of a representative artistic language as a means to acquire that protection. The engravings on the shield by Shay Id Alony are influenced by the African tribal tradition. These engravings recall cave drawings that represent rituals of planning and going forth to battle, where the very act of primeval drawing in fact serves as a type of preparation and defense for the future. Shields function here as a type of mask. In this tradition of preparation for battle, masks mediate between the supernatural and the human, serving in various rituals accompanying man in each stage of his life.

Like the masks, the shield serves as a sort of external façade that represents Man. In the psychological teachings of Karl Gustav Jung, the mask – the representative “façade” with which we clothe ourselves and turn toward society — is called the “soul’s mask”, or “persona“, which in Latin means “role”. The mask helps a person defend himself from injuries, a barrier that helps to function properly. It hides and isolates, adapting itself to existing norms, while on the other hand it needs to fit the individual’s real personality, the soul of the person it is protecting. Therefore, it must not be far from the personality’s traits, not too rigid, capable of being removed or changed, and primarily aware of its owner. Without such adaptation, if the mask we carry with us is too rigid, the inner living, breathing soul is liable to be suffocated.

Making the shield involves crafts of soldering, welding, and use of pressure on the shields which are made from iron, and on the negatives that are made from wood. The shields represent a kind of inner world that did not gain protection, like the sheath that did not succeed in protecting its insides, due to external representation that failed to communicate and defend, and thus the sheath is harmed, remaining charred from being burnt or scarred.

This sort of inner conflict – overprotection associated with lack of ability to communicate, is expressed in the works via the shields which, as noted, symbolize more than anything an inner rift and basic yearning for protection. The objects ‘try to create’ a sort of mediation between inside and outside, yet simultaneously represent repeated failure – and the frustration stemming from it, in such a labor of mediation.  Nevertheless, the work of Art per se is to defend against total loss of hope.

2015 "Boundary Line", The new workshop Ramat Eliyahu, Rishon Lezion. 

Curated by Orit Hasson Walder.

6.3.2014 – 19.4.2014

Shay Id Alony's 'Titans' is an installation of seven sculptures, figures perceived as a sort of hybrid between monkeys, aliens, humans or mythological creatures. Brightly colored and large in size, the sculptures function as the representation of a community of unknown identity, a crossbreed of past, present and future that draws its distinctive traits from various cultures.

The sculptures stand alert, prepared for action or a communal act of protest. However, beyond the physical power projected by their towering above the viewer, there is in an apparent vulnerability, which seems to originate in their magnitude. Their ungainliness marks them as 'others,' the progenies of a foreign evolutionary chain.

The sexuality of the figures is clear and naïve, functional. Nonetheless, it's hard to identify the gender role division among them. According to Id Alony, the survivalist conduct of the community he has created dictates taking turns in the division of roles between the sexes.

Id Alony's interest in ancient cultures doesn't end with his sculptural style. His work refers to the transformation of objects that were produced with ritual intention and have turned into decorative objects. For example, a good luck talisman in the entrance to a home, or a fertility amulet nestling in a woman's pocket are objects that were made for the purpose of a certain daily ritual practice. By its owner, once the object had finished fulfilling its task (to bring luck and fortune), it was abandoned. Under the aegis of the Western world, they become collectible art pieces. On his part, Id Alony aims for a new ritual practice, by which he restores to the object its original mythic functionality. Deprived of their purpose, the sculptures seem to stand in protest in face of their destiny.

Id Alony's preoccupation with sculpture, alongside his longstanding performance work, laid the ground for his examination of the connections between action, object and body. Id Alony's performance began with understanding the need for the presence of a body inside the object. The set of performed actions targets a mutual change, in both the object and the performer, Id Alony. Over the years Id Alony's performance has turned into a series of actions in the studio space, a kind of a sculptural ritual that leaves a testimonial object.

In the present exhibition, responsibility for the performance act has been placed in the hands of the viewer. The bodily gestures in the sculptured material, the smooth texture of the bodies alongside the contortion of their poses, the tools placed in the corners of the space, like a symbolic text for an array of cultural activities, and especially the scale of the figures—slightly overpassing that of the viewer—all of these ask for a physical reference, which brings to light the Titans' existential dependency on the viewer's wandering.

Ofra Harnam

Installation, mixed media. 2012

The installation is open to the entrance from several directions, inviting the viewer to meet a world full of strange and intriguing objects - a kind of contemporary wonder room. A fantastic world made up of hybrid objects and colorful paintings that require a long and careful examination to experience the cultural multiplicity.

Curated by Dalia Levin, Ghila Limon, Daria Kaufman.

Braverman Gallery

21.4.2011 - 2.6.2011

Shay Id Alony's solo exhibition Visions is the culmination of his research into the personal-figurative-cultural connection between inner space and everyday life.

Alony created a site-specific installation, in which he assembles a landscape of objects that allow an anonymous audience to create their own personal space within the distorted frame of the Gallery.  The viewer is able to wander through various interior spaces, moving between partial objects, hybridization's and facades, ultimately joining Alony's personal journey through his collection of images that represent his inner world.

The pieces at Visions are strangely intimidating but at the same time nostalgically familiar. The connections between mundane and personal, practical and fantastic, mechanic and organic create a merge almost beyond containment; neither evolution nor hybridization, they represent an expression of an impossible assembly of meanings.

As derived from the exhibition title, the meaning does not lie in the objects or their static arrangement in the Gallery space but in the existence of countless potential visions (viewpoints) that might occur in the unique encounter between the viewer and the objects in the room, which ends at a split as once again strangers yet with each holding inside something of the other.

2010 Young Artist Award Exhibition, Hertzelia Museum of Art.

Whistles / Island

Ongoing Performance Project, 2010.

12.07.2010 — 04.09.2010

Curator : Milana Gitzin-Adiram

The exhibition transforms the concept of the Island into a tool for examining the limits and status of the museum and of performance art in the context of contemporary reality. The seven performance artists that participated in the exhibition took over various museum spaces, while simultaneously sharing their ongoing work processes. Viewers, who were welcomed at the museum during its regular opening hours, were invited to explore concerns including the museum’s role as an isolated cultural “lighthouse” or ivory tower, the limits of the museum as an institution, and the status of the artwork (if artworks indeed emerge out of the work process) as an organic, vital and unique entity.

The exhibition attempts to overturn the conventional order associated with the exhibition of art. Rather than presenting the conclusion of the artistic process – the moment in which the creative act ends and the work is complete – it highlights the creative process and the work’s evolution, in an attempt to introduce viewers into the artist’s private world and to involve them in his or her personal quest. Another central concern in the exhibition is the tension between traditional art forms, which are unchanging and seemingly eternal, and between performance art, which is bound by the limits of a specific time and place. The exhibition’s schedule of events and performances has been similarly adapted to the process unfolding in the museum space. Unique events took place once every two weeks, while the traditional opening night was replaced by an evening of performances on August 26, which marked the exhibition’s closing.

The island, as a concept, vacillates between a wild fantasy about freedom – a dream of a possible utopia and splendid isolation – and the destructive potential of its boundaries, which can transform it into an oppressive prison. The primal, animalistic, communal and political aspects of the island were revealed to viewers during the ongoing process of mounting the exhibition.

Fresh Paint Art Fair, Braverman Gallery pavilion, Tel Aviv, 2010

Serge Tiroche Collection / Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

2010

2009 Sections 1- 13, Universal Circus Ltd. (City Performances), ARTLV - Tel Aviv Biennial.

Curated by Edna Moshenson, Maayan Sheleff.

My interest in the performance art medium allows me to expand upon the sensual, physical and ritual aspect of the installation and sculpture.

in my work "The Fest” (2007), I chose to replay an iconic ceremony where the physical representations of the body, food and sculpture interact by way of replacing one another.

in my work "Block 12" (2003) I dealt with the object : a semi-detached structure - public housing, and the person who lives, as an individual and as part of society, in this mode of existence, while being influenced by - and influencing it, on the one hand, and I myself, who tries to understand it, on the other.
The outline of the story is derived from personal childhood memories that have undergone a process of deconstruction resulting in new objects. These objects were translated into forces that set in motion the whole work." 
Soundtrack: Binya Reches

Nightlight-5 Festival.

Hand to Hand / Performance Art in the community space.

1000 lamps 1000 figurines and 1000 calls that reveal a secret.

curator Ravit Harari / Yasha Rozov / Tel Aviv Cultural Department.

Neve Sha'anan Tel Aviv.

Photo: Jacob Mehager

After the first acquaintance in 2014 and a visit to my exhibition "Titans", it was a while before we met again, Iris Adler, Tali Milchberg and I to collaborate on their successful children's fashion brand nununu.

Together we have created a work environment that allows this special creation, to break through our own boundaries. We chose to conceive the collection already at the concept stage and combine design and art together. Creative and successful collaboration requires a supportive work environment and a professional team.

Nununu has the best team.

Friday - solo exhibition -

Curator : Ravit Harari

Ramat Hasharon Contemporary Art Gallery

a total installation that overpowers the entire exhibition space and turns it into a place of a ritual, a transformative, temporary worship, which seeks to change a state of consciousness or produce an emotional and spiritual transformation, doubt in the viewer and doubt in the artist. to create the creation ceremony of the work of art itself.

The installation seeks to distill archetypes and symbols that form a common basis for rituals in different cultures, and accompany my work over the years (spears, masks, shields, armor, various hunting or war tools, alongside recurring symbols such as eyes or fish). I strive to create a space that eliminates the boundaries of time and place, to move between an ancient past and an imagined future and between a pagan cave and a church hall covered in stained glass.

The exhibition consists of video work and sculptural elements tailored to the dimensions of the exhibition space, the various elements maintain relationships of scale with the human body - the body of the artist.

The human body, which is absent from the sculptural installation but stars in the video work, returns and is mentioned in the dimensions of the various objects and the remains of an action that it left behind.