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​Ouzi Zur, “Close One Eye”

Haaretz Literature, 14 March 2014

 

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Disappearance and concealment form the lion’s share in Yaara Zach’s excellent and cohesive exhibit. A horizon line for the entire exhibition is created by a zipper bisecting the “eastern wall” at eye height. If you open it fully, the entrails of the wall will be revealed as the entrails of the human body, but while it is zipped up it is a label of continuing, noble “coolness”. As a counterweight, a basketball hovers just above the ground, with all that remains of it being its enigmatic, wilting outline. A chain of basketball outlines hangs on a hook against the whiteness of the northern wall.

 

The lid of a Pyrex pot has been smashed and laid on the floor as a diadem of fading, vulnerable, and injuring beauty. Not far from there, the steel hoop is placed as halo emptied of content, and further on are laid individual fragments as a shattered crescent, as a scratching primary jewel. On the wall floats a dark polished marble panel, with the word “curtain” engraved in it – as a contrast between the velvety softness of the word’s meaning and the cool rigidity of the material in which it has been immortalized; like a tombstone to the meaning of all words. In contrast to them both, in the corner, shines the neon inscription “manicure pedicure”. It is detached from its environment, its context, its usage, as a barren indicator of low beauty, illuminating with its bluish light the ascetic, concealing seriousness of the entire exhibit.