The act of re-appropriating found objects is at the center of the ambiguous world of Tiebreak, whether through their integration as actual readymades or as subjects of formal representation. Either way, once recontextualized. Frank pushes the material, formal and thematic limits of the object by way of the subtle sculptural shifts she applies. These transformations, which alter the object’s customary visual configuration, result in new images: a horizontal alignment of baseball bats becomes evocative of an Israeli forest consumed by fire; clusters of ping-pong rackets emulate the fallen leaves of autumn; and a tennis court is turned into a decorative carpet overgrown with wild vegetation. Both alluring and disturbing, the parallel world that Frank creates invites the viewer to dive in and succumb to its compelling beauty. Yet under the surface, behind the lure of beauty, lies a muted violence evocative of solitude and alienation. This universe, which seems governed by an unlikely logic, manifests itself in a number of isolated episodes, like distinct instances frozen in time. Each of these sculptural constructs unveils the three-dimensional frame of an engineered nature, where the strange and familiar coexist. They are informed by the awe and disorientation typical of the fictive world of animated films – with good reason, as Frank’s work process often conflates the real and the virtual. Each of these sculptural mise-en-scènes began as a digital simulation of the object using 3-D imaging. This digital rendering unleashes the familiar object from realistic constraints, allowing for unlimited freedom toward the construction of a new reality. Breaking away from the constraints of physicality, reality and functional value, the virtual images are re-translated into art objects, this time through actual manipulation of matter.
Frank’s sculptural environments are platforms for simulation and imitation, scenes that trace a supposedly concrete reality. Yet in every such creative process, the artist leaves a conspicuous flaw in the work itself, a mark that exposes the medium’s failure inherent in realizing the mimetic project. It is a crucial moment in the work, since the traces of failure equally constitute, paradoxically, the mark of success. It is a moment in which the viewers realize that the sculptural environment they behold is, in fact, an assortment of objects, a visual construct through which the artist formulates questions that go beyond the object and pertain to concepts of beauty and aesthetics, domination and force, life and death.
Tal Frank, born 1973 in Tel Aviv; Lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Sally Haftel Naveh, independent curator, teaches in the curatorial studies program at the Technion’s Division of External Studies and Continuing Education, Tel Aviv.
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