PRESS RELEASE

URI TZAIG

Unlimited Contemporary Art, Athens

24/04 – 01/06/2002

Opening Wednesday 24/04/2002, 8-11 pm in presence of the artist.

Art:Concept, Paris

27/04 – 25/05/2002

Opening Saturday 27/04/2002, 4-9 pm in presence of the artist.

Unlimited Contemporary Art is very pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Uri Tzaig in Athens; the Israeli artist will show 2 new video works, both of them shown for the first time:

FIN, FIN - a new short movie he made for the Israel TV - 5 min loop - filmed in a hotel at the Dead Sea.

King Kong - a 3 min deconstructed version of the classic movie “King Kong”. It is a chapter of a longer movie on which the artist is working right now.

They are both divided into equal sequences of 30 sec each, keeping the same rhythm. Unlike Tempo (1998)*, which is also based on equal length “pictures”, edited in an arbitrary order, those new works are referring to one space/event only- in a deconstructive way.

In addition, Uri Tzaig will present B/W, a reactualized video installation:

This work, whose abbreviated title is short for “Black and White”, exists only as a video, unlike most of Tzaig’s more performative, spectacle-oriented work. Shot during a trip in the Swiss Alps, B/W offers us a scanning way to view the world. It’s very hard to discern what it is we are looking at until the snowy landscape gradually ascends to great heights. There are the black sides of cliffs and a forest disrupt the monotony. It is at this moment that we re-focus on what we’ve just witnessed, and recognize a snowy mountain from foot to peak. B/W points to comparisons between the simplicities and complexities that exist in an apparently all-white snowy landscape, and an all-brown sandy desert. In other words, how many deserts can we re-locate? A snow-covered hill, an ocean, a prairie? Tzaig proves that one thing is not necessarily different from another, just different levels of perception.

(In catalogue of the exhibition Duel, Artists Space, New York, 2000.)

Finally, Twins Fountain, a photographic work based on a performance during his solo exhibition at the FRAC Reims (France) in 2000.

Well known internationally since the 1997 Venice Biennale and Documenta X, Uri Tzaig creates conceptual work that focuses on sports, spectatorship, dance, language and games, using several medias including video, performance, writing and prints.

Simultaneously, Uri Tzaig will present the videos Allah Akbar, Crystal and B/W as well as new photos at Art: Concept. The parisian gallery invited the artist to celebrate the 5 years of the Rue Louise Weiss, the new and successful location of contemporary art galleries in Paris (13eme arrondissement, near the new Library). This is his first solo exhibition in Paris.

*Tempo-10mns, produced and edited during Tzaig’s stay in Athens in 1998 (an autonomous part of his film Tempo-60 mns) will be presented at the Sandretto Foundation, Guarene (Italy) in the exhibition Self/ In material Conscience (works from the FRAC PACA Collection, Marseille, France) in April 2002.