Roy Mordechay Styrofoam Prayers

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• Text by Julia Reich (EN)

  Roy Mordechay - Styrofoam Prayers

  12 November 2016 - 08 Januar 2017

  An amorphous block of pale blue styrofoam, dented on many of its edges, uneven and misshapen, has been degraded to a waste product because it could no longer fulfill its functional purpose. In the exhibit "Styrofoam Prayers," Roy Mordechay de-contextualizes this industrial material and, in the title, couples it with the religious practice of prayer. In so doing, the artist ascribes these blue styrofoam objects and the engraved or paint-speckled wood forms embedded in them the almost transcendent aura of a venerable cult object. A wooden surface unexpectedly depicts a mundane experience: the moment before diving into a pool of water. This motif, at first glance, seems to reflect a normal athletic scene, yet this representation also refers back to an ancient Greek painting on the slab of a high diver's tomb. A kind of memento mori1 is manifested in this figure of a naked youth, who in ancient times was understood to express the leap from life on earth into the afterworld. This unique combination of materials and choice of motifs is exemplary of Mordechay's artistic practice.

  Mordechay analyses cultural imageries and their patterns, narratives and representations from a cultural- anthropological point of view. His artistic analysis is not a statement of a state, but rather a continuous and never-ending process of searching that is strongly linked to his own biography and cultural identity. Every culture has its own images, iconographies and visual signs which, framed through a long history of decoding, have undergone shifts in their interpretation. By decontextualizing culturally charged motifs and their common interpretative schemata and removing their contexts completely, Mordechay disunites the image from its readability.

  The recently created large-scale paintings articulate a transformation in Mordecay's artistic practice: His graphic skill, which stems primarily from visual impulse and intuition, unfolds in a sketchbook. These plan-like and fleeting drawings formerly served as the basis for the complex compositions of his canvases and have been correspondingly transformed and modified for the medium of the canvas accordingly. While a blank canvas places certain demands on the artist, the drawing process is more fluid; it is freer, and above all more primal. Tied in with this primal moment, a sketch both characterizes and defines the essential. The sketches are no longer mere preliminary drawings; they are central elements which Mordechay transfers directly onto canvas, thereby freeing himself from the demands that that canvas placed on him. Compositional elements are combined through a playful and improvised dialog between images; they culminate in a humorous, yet at the same time mysterious and enraptured pictorial cosmos. Despite some figurative elements, the paintings do not inform any specific message and they forgo clear logic or interpretation. They simultaneously withdraw themselves from and flirt with reality, thereby putting the rules for decoding patterns to the test. A male head no longer makes any direct reference to a portrait, rather it is much more a purely formal element, which makes a statement about the portrait itself as an art form. A horizontal line is no longer to be understood as a limitation of an image's perceptible space or as any kind of orientation.

  1 From the Latin: "remember that you must die"

  Tangible patterns are no longer valid. Although the paintings seem to tell a story, they speak much more about how history and culture themselves are narrated. It is the artistic quest for the primal, for that which has not been tainted by content or history; a quest that is fully aware that the attempt to capture its own object artistically is impossible. His works are, in this sense, pre-iconographic descriptions; descriptions not intended for identification or interpretation, but rather for the purpose of artistically developing a basic anthropological understanding of the origin of forms and figures. The understanding and reading of forms and figures has always been conveyed through the medium of the book. The book is therefore both an agent of cultural imageries and at the same time a product of culture. Thus it stands in a tautological relationship to itself. Mordechay, aware of the constructivist ideas of culture associated with this, positions a book of the pictorial canon of ancient Greek sculpture on a sloping needle. In this frozen balancing act, the book seems to slide, pulled down by its own weight. A poetic humor unfolds in the work at first glance; upon closer examination, it is uncompromisingly revolutionary. This ambivalence is also encountered in Mordechay's incongruous combinations of materials. Like a ceremonial object, a totem-like head sculpted from Ytong (aerated concrete) is presented on a wooden pedestal. Taking a closer look, a cavity becomes apparent, which then betrays the sculpture as a birdhouse. The industrial material becomes a showplace for the metaphor of fluttering thoughts. In Mordechay's work nothing seems to be what it is. It unleashes a game of its own, one which, through Mordechay’s cultural-anthropological explorations, creates its own liberated imagery full of tension and dynamism.

  Text: Julia Reich

  Roy Mordechay (born 1976 in Haifa, Israel), currently lives and works in Düsseldorf and Tel-Aviv.
  His artistic practice is based on an inter-disciplinary approach. He strives to work in different mediums and create surprising combinations between them. Two-dimensional paintings and aquarelle drawings are transformed into three-dimensional kinetic sculptures and dynamic installations. His works are infused with humor and irony, despite their frequent portrayal of a chaotic, anxious-ridden reality. They depict a futuristic, fictional world charged with motifs from ancient worlds and rituals; ultimately, representing a longing for an unmediated connection to nature, earth and matter.

  Roy Mordechay is an active artist for over a decade and has exhibited at various art- institutions, both in Israel and around the world, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Feldbusch-Wiesner Galerie in Berlin, the Felix Ringel Galerie in Düsseldorf, the Petach-Tikva Museum of Art, the Haifa Museum, the Circle 1 Initiative in Berlin, the Vegas Gallery in London, the CCA in Tel-Aviv and more. He has received important awards and grants, among them the Pais Grant-Israel Lottery Council for Culture and Art, the Yehoshua Rabinowitz Foundation Grant for the Arts, Tel Aviv; the Israel Young Artist Prize of the Ministry of Culture and the International Grant Program of the Lepsien Art Foundation, Germany.

  Many of Mordechay's works are part of various important Israeli and international collections.

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