 | "Blow Up #1," a photograph of an exploding floral still-life from Ori Gersht's "Time After Time" is one of the works by the London-based artist now on view at the Yale Center for British Art. |
“The Forest,” a 13-minute video installation by London-based artist
Ori Gersht that was shot in a remote Ukrainian forest where his family found
temporary refuge from Nazi persecution during World War II, will be shown through
Dec. 30 at the Yale Center for British Art.
T H I S
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE NEWS
Video installations by Ori Gersht
on view at British Art Center
A copy of “The Forest” was presented to the center by Alexander F.
Cohen ’82, M.A. ’85, J.D. ’88 on the occasion of his 25th reunion.
The film, shot in Galicia in southwest Ukraine, was originally shown as part
of a body of photographic work titled “The Clearing,” made on a series
of trips Gersht took to modern-day Ukraine in 2005. The artist’s destination
was the village of Kosov, the birthplace of his father-in-law, Gideon Engler.
During the Second World War, Engler hid (with his father and brother) for two-and-a-half
years in Kosov when his village became “Judenrein” (cleansed of Jews).
Many of their relatives, friends and neighbors were caught and sent to death
camps or taken into nearby wods and shot.
Prompted by these stories and by the diary of Baruch Engler, Gideon’s father,
which was given to Gersht before he traveled to the Ukraine, the artist made
his way into the Moskolovka Forest with the help of local lumberers, who worked
in a region already scheduled for harvest. The location was a site of Nazi atrocities
during the war, but is also evocative of Europe’s ancient woodlands.
“The Forest” is a series of processional pans across bands of individual
trees. Gradually the eye notices a number of trees mysteriously falling, with
the soundtrack amplifying the sound of each crash. In between, there are moments
of silence when the calm of the forest is restored, then the trees start to fall
once more. In the catalog accompanying “The Clearing,” Steven Bode
of Film and Video Umbrella calls “The Forest” “a uniquely powerful
work; unstinting and indelibly haunting, it combines a terrible sadness with
a quiet and formidable strength. For every tree that is gone, it seems to say,
there are many still standing. And for every tree that falls, there is not just
a sound but an echo, reverberating into the present and beyond.”
A concurrent video installation and two large photographs will also be displayed.
This includes a 2007 photograph of an exploding floral still-life from Gersht’s
series “Time After Time,” titled “Blow Up #1”; a photograph
titled “Drawing Past” from the artist’s series “Liquidation”;
and the video installation “Big Bang,” which shows a flower arrangement
exploding in slow motion after the sound of a wailing siren has faded. “Big
Bang” was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum for the exhibition “Twilight:
Photography in the Magic Hour.” According to Gersht, the work “addresses
the relationship between … delicate and beautiful moments and … erupting
violence.”
Gersht was born in Tel Aviv in 1967 and has lived and worked in London for the
last 19 years. He is a professor of photography at the University College for
the Creative Arts. His work has been shown extensively in the United Kingdom
and internationally, and is held in a range of private and national collections,
including the Tate Britain, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston.
The Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10
a.m.-5 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Through Nov. 28, the center is open until
8 p.m. on Wednesdays. It will also be open until 8 p.m. Dec. 7, 14 and 21. For
more information, call (203) 432-2800 or visit www.yale.edu/ycba.
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