Yuval Yairi

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Yuval Yairi (born 1961, Tel-Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli artist, using photography and video. Exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, Andrea Meislin Gallery NYC, Alon Segev Gallery Tel Aviv, Qbox Gallery Athens, Zuiderkerk Amsterdam, San Diego Natural History Museum]

Yuval Yairi's series "Forevemore" has been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Andrea Meislin Gallery in NYC in 2005.

Yairi photographs the leper house with a digital video camera in still mode, constructing the image from hundreds (at times thousands) of frames. The pictures are taken in the course of several hours, during which the artist slowly and accurately documents every detail in the space from a single position, like the viewer's observation movement upon entering the space. He selects details which he then combines into a final unified photographic image containing a wealth of information, one that no single still photograph can contain. Thus, in fact, Yairi overcomes the temporal and spatial limitations of conventional photography.

_{from exhibition text, Tel Aviv Museum.}

Yuval Yairi's most recent body of works "Palaces of Memory" has been exhibited at Alon Segev Gallery in 2007.

The Cage and the Bird "A cage went in search of a bird" wrote Kafka : a photographic structure went out into the world in search of motifs that would suit it. The result is the heart of this exhibition. The world can be perceived as "at once," as one, absolute, indivisible thing. But it can also be thought of as the sum of an infinite numbers of parts. So it is with everything, small or large: the world exists both as "one" (the absolute) and as a cumulation of an infinity of units. It is this duality that Yuval Yairi's photographs attempt to capture. They are almost all, at one and the same time, a collection of fractions, and a whole. They represent these two states of being - like water attempting to be vapor and ice at one and the same time. The "thickening of time" results from the image of the "art of memory," from which Yairi sets out to make his recent series of photographs, following in the path of Simonides of Ceos (556-468 B.C.E), the Greek poet considered to be the father of mnemonics (the art of aiding memory). Simonides' method of remembering is based on the "translation" of abstract concepts into concrete objects and their imaginary placement in a space well known to the memorizer, based on the assumption that concrete images are easier to remember than abstract ideas. Thus, for example, a poem can be translated into a series of mnemonic images that can be installed in the home of the memorizer. The act of remembering involves a stroll through the house, and the gathering of visual "reminders" along a known path.

_{Dror Burstein}

[edit] Exhibitions

2008 Palaces of Memory, solo exhibition, Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY
2008 British Council - Living Together, regional group exhibition
2008 @60.art.israel.world, group exhibition, Magnes Museum, Berkeley, Ca, USA
2008 The homes of others, group exhibition, Ticho House, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

2007 Contemporary Israeli Photography, group exhibition, San Diego Natural History Museum
2007 Moods and Modes in Israeli Photography, group exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2007 Palaces of Memory, solo exhibition, Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv
2007 Art for Aid, group exhibition, Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam
2007 Current Visions part 2, group exhibition, Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY

2006 Lanterna Magica, Metaphysical Light in Israeli Photography, Bat-Yam Museum of Art
2006 d.t-minimum time, Qbox Gallery, Athens, Greece
2006 Heara 10, Science Museum, Jerusalem (4 min. video with Anat Barel)

2005 Yuval Yairi: Forevermore, solo exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2005 Forevermore: The Hansen Project, solo exhibition, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York