Avner Ben Gal
Christoph Büchel
Fabrice Gygi
Michal Helfman
Tal R.
Adam Rabinowitz
Curator: Ory Dessau

‏‏The Exhibition ‘Penal Colony’ deals with the idea of sculpture as performance, both potential and actual. The works in the exhibition, either objects or structures, are characterized according to concepts of fixtures, instruments, apparatus, machines, constructions, set-ups and traps. The exhibition raises questions about the shift from object to environment, viewing participation and the idea of experience, about self-location, territorialization and de-territorialization. These questions are examined in relation to private and public strategies for achieving a control over a certain zone or property.
We know that in Israel the idea of codifiyng a space through objects or structure, the act of territorialization, is charged and experienced differently than in Europe, and the show offers ways for experiencing different codifications that define space, and activate it in a certain way.
Each work in the show has a spatial claim. Each work in the show presents a “demand” towards the space where it is located. Each demand is realized through the integration of the viewer, or through the emphasis of his/her exclusion from the event of the work. The works organize environments, both active and abandoned, that contain parameters of set-ups, and therefore, of performances. Those performances create repeating exercises and one-time executions. In accordance to that, the presence of the viewer determines both the condition for the activation of the work (authorized presence) or its destruction (un-authorized presence).