Tamy Ben-Tor
01 - 29 Apr 2007
TAMY BEN-TOR
1 April – 29 April 2007
Of course people who are conformist are not gonna like it. Of course people who are less open minded are not gonna like it. But if you like this it means that you are open minded, and you are available to new ideas, and you are one step ahead of your generation...
With a self-absorbed naturalness the words pour out of the mouth of the art critic that artist Tamy Ben-Tor portrays in her video The End of Art.
The art critic is just one of the many characters that the artist transforms herself into and presents before the camera or on the stage in her videos and performances. Using simple devices – a wig, a dialect, a few gestures and mannerisms – Tamy Ben-Tor moves in and out of identities, transforming herself from one archetypical character to another. What the characters have in common is their pompous egos and their inability to think self-critically. Tamy Ben-Tor introduces us to an array of tragicomic figures, all of whom are hopelessly caught in the domain of idiocy. The Contractor is an entrepreneur in the building trade who obsessively rants about lost dollars and cents in his building projects. Alexandra is a woman who asks herself how she can be of use to other people if she herself is not happy and satisfied. We also meet the melancholy artist in Artist in Residence who has a studio grant in another city, and who is momentarily cheered by the memory that the audience did not understand anything about her residency project.
Tamy Ben-Tor’s characters are all enveloped in their own ideological systems, unable to see beyond their own egos. They cling on to a truth, a conviction that forms the basis of how they experience their own identity. Tamy Ben-Tor is interested in people’s psychological state when they are just being themselves, so to speak.
Her characters are imitations but at the same time completely fictitious. They arise from observing people but also from the medium of television that provides us daily with many strong characters, people who have something to say and who are not afraid to share their opinions. Tamy Ben-Tor was born in the 1970s and was raised with the television medium and its ability to package thoughts, ideas, ideologies and people in suitable portions in order to quickly and simply convey them to a large, faceless audience. She is very skilled in the logic and dramaturgy of television and it is the character-driven sitcoms of the 1970s, the documentary wave of the 1980s, the increasing fixation with the individual of the 1990s and the innumerable confessions in countless docu-soaps of our decade that form the basis for the existence of these pictorial narratives. We all recognise the characters we encounter in her films and performances.
Tamy Ben-Tor studied for three years at the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, Israel, where her way of creating her characters took shape. She then completed a master’s degree in art at the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York, USA where she lives and works today. Tamy Ben-Tor is Jewish, she was born and raised in Israel, and in her earlier work the trauma of the Holocaust was always present. For a time she worked intensively with the image of Adolf Hitler, including a series of videos and performances where she wears the dictator’s unmistakable moustache as if she attempted to exorcise his image from the collective consciousness by creating new, alternative images of Hitler. Her best known work, the film Women Talk about Adolf Hitler, 2004, is about a group of mainly Jewish women who try to reconcile themselves with the memory of Hitler in their own and very humorous way. The artist’s origin in a region marked by protracted conflicts about power and territory lead to the work Girls Beware, a film based on a public-service message to Israeli girls to be careful not to let themselves be seduced by Arab boys, as it could lead to abduction.
Tamy Ben-Tor’s latest videos, Normal and The End of Art, take place in the complex web of professions and phenomena that we call the art world. Undauntedly she scrutinizes the relationships and the interactions between artists, critics and art institutions. Tamy Ben-Tor often shocks and provokes with her reflections just as she provides entertainment and release. She pokes about and stirs up things and her work seldom fails to affect the viewer.
Ulf Eriksson
1 April – 29 April 2007
Of course people who are conformist are not gonna like it. Of course people who are less open minded are not gonna like it. But if you like this it means that you are open minded, and you are available to new ideas, and you are one step ahead of your generation...
With a self-absorbed naturalness the words pour out of the mouth of the art critic that artist Tamy Ben-Tor portrays in her video The End of Art.
The art critic is just one of the many characters that the artist transforms herself into and presents before the camera or on the stage in her videos and performances. Using simple devices – a wig, a dialect, a few gestures and mannerisms – Tamy Ben-Tor moves in and out of identities, transforming herself from one archetypical character to another. What the characters have in common is their pompous egos and their inability to think self-critically. Tamy Ben-Tor introduces us to an array of tragicomic figures, all of whom are hopelessly caught in the domain of idiocy. The Contractor is an entrepreneur in the building trade who obsessively rants about lost dollars and cents in his building projects. Alexandra is a woman who asks herself how she can be of use to other people if she herself is not happy and satisfied. We also meet the melancholy artist in Artist in Residence who has a studio grant in another city, and who is momentarily cheered by the memory that the audience did not understand anything about her residency project.
Tamy Ben-Tor’s characters are all enveloped in their own ideological systems, unable to see beyond their own egos. They cling on to a truth, a conviction that forms the basis of how they experience their own identity. Tamy Ben-Tor is interested in people’s psychological state when they are just being themselves, so to speak.
Her characters are imitations but at the same time completely fictitious. They arise from observing people but also from the medium of television that provides us daily with many strong characters, people who have something to say and who are not afraid to share their opinions. Tamy Ben-Tor was born in the 1970s and was raised with the television medium and its ability to package thoughts, ideas, ideologies and people in suitable portions in order to quickly and simply convey them to a large, faceless audience. She is very skilled in the logic and dramaturgy of television and it is the character-driven sitcoms of the 1970s, the documentary wave of the 1980s, the increasing fixation with the individual of the 1990s and the innumerable confessions in countless docu-soaps of our decade that form the basis for the existence of these pictorial narratives. We all recognise the characters we encounter in her films and performances.
Tamy Ben-Tor studied for three years at the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, Israel, where her way of creating her characters took shape. She then completed a master’s degree in art at the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York, USA where she lives and works today. Tamy Ben-Tor is Jewish, she was born and raised in Israel, and in her earlier work the trauma of the Holocaust was always present. For a time she worked intensively with the image of Adolf Hitler, including a series of videos and performances where she wears the dictator’s unmistakable moustache as if she attempted to exorcise his image from the collective consciousness by creating new, alternative images of Hitler. Her best known work, the film Women Talk about Adolf Hitler, 2004, is about a group of mainly Jewish women who try to reconcile themselves with the memory of Hitler in their own and very humorous way. The artist’s origin in a region marked by protracted conflicts about power and territory lead to the work Girls Beware, a film based on a public-service message to Israeli girls to be careful not to let themselves be seduced by Arab boys, as it could lead to abduction.
Tamy Ben-Tor’s latest videos, Normal and The End of Art, take place in the complex web of professions and phenomena that we call the art world. Undauntedly she scrutinizes the relationships and the interactions between artists, critics and art institutions. Tamy Ben-Tor often shocks and provokes with her reflections just as she provides entertainment and release. She pokes about and stirs up things and her work seldom fails to affect the viewer.
Ulf Eriksson