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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Ori Gersht: The Clearing
Verdict: Unrelenting tragedy
Photographic Exhibition
Three canvasses are covered in swathes of white and grey, three in sweeps of brown and green. Abstract black shapes emerge from a rich, navy ground.
In fact, these images are not paintings but photographs – although the mistake is easily made. They have a grainy, painterly texture that suggests a human touch, and have none of the visual clarity or cool sharpness that might be expected from a photograph. They were shot over a long exposure from a moving train, a technique which has dissolved the shapes and streaked the colours of the original scene. And it has also bleached the prints, so that their undulating forms resonate with a kind of tonal melody, like an abstract painting.
On closer inspection these images aren’t abstract either – not in the sense of things created or ordered for a purpose. Ori Gersht’s photographs are sloppy and casual: lines slip off the edge, forms melt away, repetetive patterns stop repeating themselves. Behind the blurred surfaces lie hints of objects speeding past: the outlines of a house, rows of trees, the warm glow of a sun peeping out from beyond the horizon. The pictures play a trick on the viewer – they hover between abstract and representational art, and as a result any meaning seems to dance out of reach.
This series of photographs is called Liquidation, and that is what seems to happen to their world - messy, informal and devastating, it dissolves before our eyes. Two photographs shot in startling clarity seem to pose a counterpoint, but they turn out to be as disorientating. In one, the strata of the forest are laid bare: cool, pure snow; spiky, leafless trees; harsh, rocky mountainside. The awe of this wilderness makes an obvious comparison to Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic painter who (as the gallery text mentions) also painted this forest. But Romantic painting typically invites the viewer in, making the viewer’s emotional journey the subject. The unpeopled bands of Ori Gersht’s photograph, on the other hand, stretch to the sides of the image, refusing the visual relief of recessive space.
Adding to this visual confusion, a haunting, irregular sound comes from the film showing next door - The Forest, an 18-minute loop by Ori Gersht of the same landscape. It is largely silent, punctuated by colossal sounds of destruction. The gap between each crash is enough to make the next an awful surprise.
The film initially seems to show a more pleasant and welcoming aspect. It is summer, and shafts of light stream through green branches to leave dappled shadows on vast tree trunks. The camera pans slowly, as if calmly observing the detail of a sylvan idyll.
Suddenly, a tree falls. It creaks gently from side to side, then begins to race to the forest floor - crashing through other trees, breaking branches and leaving a trail of debris. This is the source of the terrible noise heard throughout the exhibition. Then silence: the camera continues to move on its unfeeling path; the forest seems to return to normal.
Then it happens again. Sometimes a tree falls at the periphery of vision, sometimes there is the sound of one falling unseen. Sometimes the sound comes in bursts, so there are periods of silent freefall with the horror of the audio left to the imagination. The dislocation of sight and hearing is profoundly disorientating – it any sense of autonomy or control over what is seen.
All of the work in this show is the result of Ori Gersht’s trips to the village of Kosov in the Ukraine, and the forest that surrounds it. The area was declared Judenrein (free of Jews) by the Nazis in 1942, following the massacre of thousands in the woods. Adults were shot and piled into mass graves. Children were thrown in alive to save bullets. Ori Gersht’s father-in-law was among the Jewish families living here before Nazi persecution; he survived by hiding in the forest for two and a half years, first in a small hole in the ground and then in an attic. In preparation for his visit, the artist read journals of this ordeal, and a palpable sense of fear and subjugation pervades the show.
Just as the unexplained narrative of falling trees in The Forest suggests a malign and powerful force over the viewer, the hasty, jerky stills of Liquidation suggest the film technique for showing trauma: the camera moves quickly and unevenly as the pressure increases. The Clearing is not a depiction of Nazi atrocities, but of the difficulty of looking at such brutal history.
Significantly, there is no human presence in any of the work, suggesting a more profound tragedy. By using the forest alone, Ori Gersht alludes to its stretch over time - this fragment was once part of a primeval forest that spread over most of Europe. Humans have inhabited it for a relatively short period, their presence as quick as the ghostly images of houses in some of the photographs. But the trees continue to fall, and The Clearing suggests that tragedy, however hard to comprehend, may be unrelenting.
Credits: Photographer - Ori Gersht. Curator - Camilla Brown (née Jackson), Senior Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery. Press - Sioban Ketelaar, Communications Manager (Press & PR), The Photographers’ Gallery. The Clearing comprises a film work and photographs. All photographs are titled under the series Liquidation 2005. The film is titled The Forest 2005, and is on a loop, duration 18 minutes. Book The Clearing, £18.99, ISBN 1 90427 021 2, published by, and film The Forest commissioned by - Film and Video Umbrella with support from Arts Council England. Thanks to - CRG Gallery, New York; Angles Gallery, Los Angeles; Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv; Andrew Mummery Gallery, London.
END
(c) Mary Paterson 2006
reviewed Monday 9 January 06 / The Photographers’ Gallery
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
