Floating Moon: Michaela Lazar and Hadar Mitz
Omer Tiroche Gallery is proud to present the exhibition Floating Moon featuring two multi-disciplinary artists Michaela Lazar and Hadar Mitz. In this exhibition Lazar and Mitz create a fluid yet unstable reality that floats between obscurity and light, nature and femininity and between passion and death.
Lazar and Mitz work in a variety of different mediums to invite the viewers to step into a playful and inquisitive experience, whilst forming a liminal space that disrupts the physical perception of time and space. Lazar’s work focuses on gender issues such as sexual identity and femininity. In her drawings, she sketches soft, gentle lines on white paper that transform stark sexual scenes into fragile realities filled with deep pain. Her drawings are characterized as both delicate and crude and turn the act of observation into voyeurism which alternates between seduction and revulsion. Lazar uses Julia Kristeva’s interpretation of the concept of “abjection”, by challenging the popular perception of motherhood and femininity. In her large-scale photograph Milk, 2017, a woman is positioned with her back to the viewer, pouring endless quantities of milk. The overflow of the precious fluid, usually connected to life and motherhood, disturbs the spectator’s serenity as one finds it hard to choose between sexual attraction or abhorrence.
Whilst nature is the focus of Mitz’s work as well, she contextualizes nature as the Other and focuses on its imagery which she manipulates and turns into digital taxidermy, giving the exhibits eternal life. For example, her video Rotating Time, 2017 shows a large rotating skull that signifies reviving long dead materials whilst trapping timelessness, as if it were a Memento Mori “(remember you must die in Latin)”, reminding us that death is part of life.
Mitz challenges nature as we know it, producing multiple layers of digital processing and reinterpretation. The transformed images are displayed in a museum-like atmosphere, letting the viewers reflect upon their own subjective interpretation of the works’ new existence. The artworks in the exhibition function as time capsules that emerge and float as subconscious visions. The link between still life, death, eternity, nature and excessive sexuality, creates a surreal space where the viewers can interact with the volatile reality.
