Yael Efrati | The Rear
Nof-Yam, 2007, wall installation
Inside the museum Yael Efrati reconstructs a coarse sandstone that breaks, as it were, out of the white wall, hinting at a greater, more primal presence ostensibly lying outside the building. Efrati’s sandstone wall was created by tearing oak tag and layering it in a manner that calls to mind organic evolution of geological or archaeological strata in the course of time. Identified with construction of architectural models, the oak tag is used here to represent a deeper layer on which those models are constructed.
The work was spawned by long strolls in Tel Aviv, where – as in other coastal towns and cities in central Israel – the sandstone stratum is still discernible between buildings. Wearing away is an integral part of the sandstone’s nature, a sedimentary rock shaped by the wind and water, in constant erosion. This natural process is accelerated by urban construction, which does not take ecological issues into consideration. Reconstruction of that disappearing stratum, only traces of which now remain in the urban texture, is executed a-priori in a material which is also subject to the wear and tear of time and nature. The perpetuation/preservation is not performed in an eternal, nonexpendable material, but rather embodies the stone’s vulnerable, brittle nature.
