Shirley Shor's "Boundary Layer" Project at "Fresh Paint 7" Art Fair, Tel Aviv
Shirley Shor's digital works in the "Boundary Layer" project work in real time. Every moment in the programs created by Shor herself is unique and is not repeated. Forms changing with hypnotic movement and an illuminated color palette compose dynamic, enticing works. This is an installation combining New Media works that are emerging animation, through which lines, forms and fluid fields of color are created that become abstract metaphors for actual topics like surfaces, territory and boundary, identity, and time.
Her works begins with a conceptual subject expressed through a set of given rules that are portrayed by animation of forms, colors, surfaces and lines in motion. The rule "gradually reveals" its range while being viewed, as the figure is cast onto the surface, making that surface become dynamic and constantly exposed to change, like a living body in action.
In the work Goddess the faces of "Louis Vuitton" models from various countries and origins throughout the world are photographed, while each time one portrait interrupts another so that in real time a hybrid portrait of them is created. The software Shor has developed enables creation in real time of fused portraits, each time in a different way, and a special moment is created that never repeats itself in exactly the same way. The faces are as if broken apart, creating a disturbing image of them. In this way the work 'creates' questions about identity and reflects the property of its constant motion: the identity is not fixed, and changes at any given moment as does the concept of absolute beauty – or (very differently) other absolute concepts on which we are fixated.
In her works Elevation and Split the space presented in the work is divided differently each time. The cube in Elevation moves spherically, and the divided areas vacate their place for a totally different division, such that at any given time a new, unique possibility of dividing the space is created which leads to its re-creation.
In Occupation the program works on 16 pixelated colors that increase gradually. When one pixel is next to another of the same color, it is connected and attached to it so that the blocs of color grow. The color groups flash. The process continues in that way until all the colors join together into two colors that are found in an inverse, mutually complementary composition.
In the work Transfiguration an outline appears of the bodies of the Bat Sheba Dance Troupe, where they are assimilated one into another. These outlines melt into each other. By contrast with the usual way dancers move on stage, the movement here is created by lack of movement, by a still connection of the dancers' bodies one to the other; using the pixels that connect them, an inner, meditative movement is created.
(Yham Hameiri, Curator at Feinberg Projects)
Shirley Shor - Born 1971, Israel. Lives and works between Tel Aviv and New York City. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally (California Biennial, Orange County museum of art, California, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMoMA), and is part of many private and public collections in the US and abroad. M.F.A, Conceptual Information Art, San Francisco State University, CA. Post B.A, Visual culture: criticism, and theory studies, Camera Obscure, school of the art, Tel-Aviv, Israel. B.A, Art History and Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
"Boundary Layer" was shown at "Feinberg Projects" booth at "Fresh Paint 7" art fair, Tel Aviv, Nov 4-8, 2014.
