Ariel Schlesinger presents an installation based on his graduation project at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. The ceiling of the space was lowered by means of plywood boards, confining an inflatable bear underneath. The bear is sewn from expendable sheets in a technique typical of fair puppets, where the two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional by virtue of the air pumped in. The bear leans on an object portraying the artist holding a ream of paper. The work strives for the aesthetics that precede design – the prototype. It transpires in a dimension of temporality, marking an essentially theoretical space – the air locked within the bear. The whiteness of the inflatable sculpture, the orderly pile of paper and the stand holding it links this piece to a state of vacuum, a feeling that is reinforced by the monotonous hum made by the visible pump that fills the bear with air.

Hemda Rosenbaum