solo exhibition at The Artist’s House Jerusalem
installation view
on the left: Kapara (atonement), 2021 on the right: Robert, 2021
hand sewn plastic coated inkjet prints
120 X 78 X 1 cm each
Masada Drier, 2020
hand sewn plastic coated inkjet prints
78 X 52 X 1 cm
Sooted Lungs, 2021
mixed media on thermal paper
32 X 21 cm
installation view
Left Behind (Amager Fælled), 2020
hand sewn plastic coated inkjet prints
34 X 25 cm
Black Ghost, 2020
hand sewn plastic coated inkjet prints
114 X 76 X 1 cm
installation view
Hollywood, 2020
hand sewn plastic coated inkjet prints
114 X 76 X 1 cm
Stacks
Semen and sweat, tears next to urine, the smell of dead leaves, nestling in antibacterial wipes and toilet paper. Yinon Avior’s works are evidence of the jumble of materials in which he wallows and from which he emerges. A mixture of body odors, textures, and carnal desires, which he gathers with his bare hands as he wanders in the darkness of the forests and in public gardens—places of bacterial overload, from which he draws finds in the form of residues, leftovers, and objects saturated with physical history.
With the devotion of a forensic pathologist, he transfers them to his work table, where they are spread out on glass panes originating from broken photocopiers, duplicated and reprinted as a photographic collage. These are fragmented, deconstructed images, at the mercy of color distortions and digital printing accidents. Avior joins them together using a sewing machine; body parts of “something” that was once something else: a trace of rainwater that fell on the body of a crushed bird, or of a brief sexual encounter in a hotel room—experiences which he preserves and laminates in impervious plastic, visible but untouchable. His necrophilic preoccupation does not end with the act of photography and its magical ability to eliminate and fix the dimension of time, but continues with a ritual embalming of the photographic material itself.
A series of drawings created on thermal paper, which changes color as it encounters heat and remembers the act of drawing, is presented next to the photographic clusters; a direct imprint of the artist’s body, which left its mark on the paper. Like a corpse left to rot in the open air, it is a drawing that remains exposed to the consuming ravages of light and air, which will fade over time and cease to exist.
With semen and tears, sweat mixed with urine, the exhibition is preserved testimony to the breathing body, with its multiple follicles, orifices, and aroused glands; the body that tests and tastes, licking the grimy substance of life from which it is made, and to which it will return, with joy and pain.
Bar Yerushalmi, 2021
Semen and sweat, tears next to urine, the smell of dead leaves, nestling in antibacterial wipes and toilet paper. Yinon Avior’s works are evidence of the jumble of materials in which he wallows and from which he emerges. A mixture of body odors, textures, and carnal desires, which he gathers with his bare hands as he wanders in the darkness of the forests and in public gardens—places of bacterial overload, from which he draws finds in the form of residues, leftovers, and objects saturated with physical history.
With the devotion of a forensic pathologist, he transfers them to his work table, where they are spread out on glass panes originating from broken photocopiers, duplicated and reprinted as a photographic collage. These are fragmented, deconstructed images, at the mercy of color distortions and digital printing accidents. Avior joins them together using a sewing machine; body parts of “something” that was once something else: a trace of rainwater that fell on the body of a crushed bird, or of a brief sexual encounter in a hotel room—experiences which he preserves and laminates in impervious plastic, visible but untouchable. His necrophilic preoccupation does not end with the act of photography and its magical ability to eliminate and fix the dimension of time, but continues with a ritual embalming of the photographic material itself.
A series of drawings created on thermal paper, which changes color as it encounters heat and remembers the act of drawing, is presented next to the photographic clusters; a direct imprint of the artist’s body, which left its mark on the paper. Like a corpse left to rot in the open air, it is a drawing that remains exposed to the consuming ravages of light and air, which will fade over time and cease to exist.
With semen and tears, sweat mixed with urine, the exhibition is preserved testimony to the breathing body, with its multiple follicles, orifices, and aroused glands; the body that tests and tastes, licking the grimy substance of life from which it is made, and to which it will return, with joy and pain.
Bar Yerushalmi, 2021