The nature of the image is to reveal forms, places, situations, events, people… Paradoxically, the photographic work of Avivit Segal attempts to make the concrete vanish and invite us to concentrate on the space as the essentials. Using the technique of overexposure it creates empty areas, whites, in a quest for a timeless and "naked" image.
If traditionally in the West the trend was to hunt the void, the confrontation between the West and the East has significantly helped to change that vision. In Taoism the void is at the confluence of two vital energies Yin and yang. It governed the existence of Chinese painting until its most contemporary artists.
This confrontation has allowed Western artists of the twentieth s starting to question its presence. Kasimir Malevitch, with his white square on a white background, was the most radical precursor. Followed by Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Robert Irwin ...
Their different experiments will even lead in 2009 to an exhibition at the Pompidou Center "Voids, a Retrospective" with 9 rooms devoid of works. Radical plastic proposition, economic claim, questioning of the imagination ... such were the various artistic research discussed in the show.
From one religion to another, from one culture to the other, the comprehension of the notion EMPTINESS - the void, differs. Once an while it is “full” at other times it is “empty” . The void is for Avivit Segal a space for perceptual projection that can leads her to emission and reflection. Thus allows the appropriation of the photographic images, as they contain, beyond clarity of time or space, a form of universalism.
In the work of Segal Avivit, the apparent banality of reality becomes poetry of the moment. Nature plays a key role in her work. While in her first series of "Shorelines" the artist represents an infinite spaces where the whites (the VOID) dominates, in her second series, 'plants', she creates a fuller plan, occupied with lines and arabesques that fill the image (FULL) .
If the two series seem radically different, yet they are complementary in the path of the artist.
Strongly influenced by Eastern philosophies, Avivit Segal here refers to the Taoist ‘s proposition that no FULL exist without a VOID
Margalit Berriet / Marie-Cécile Berdaguer
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"The photographs in the exhibition Void of the artist Avivit Segal focus on the meeting between concrete photography and abstract imagery. The white expanse incurred by overexposure is of great significance in her work. It mediates between the physical and the metaphysical worlds, between the overt and the covert. Manifesting a missing presence the space simulates silence between words on the one hand but strengthens the images themselves on the other hand.
In the quest for nothingness Segal seeks to imprint traces on the landscape, to achieve timeless clarity and condensation, which implicitly make the images resemble paintings. The white photographs create a dateless placeless reality that can be disassembled and reassembled at will.
Each work in the exhibition autonomously represents solely itself but presenting the works jointly diverts the viewer's gaze from the specific individual to the ensemble. Grouped together the photographs form a rich mosaic of personal photographs magnificently designed and revitalized by the artist.
Photography, a central contemporary medium, can document specific times and places but it can also create and direct new realities. In her work, Avivit Segal demonstrates her observational skills, her talent for decoding reality, and her ability to arouse emotion and reflection. "
Daniella Talmor, independent curator, Former Chief Curator, Haifa Museum of Art.
September 2016
Curators: Daniella Talmor [independant curator, former curator in chief at Haifa museum of Art] /
Margalit Berriet & Marie-Cécile Berdaguer [MDA].