""The performance evening of Felix Meyer-Christian and Dan Allon presents a dynamic composition of time-based art. Both artists are profoundly interested in the themes of memories, violence and its cultural and personal effect. They investigate different ways of a cultural and an emotional effect of power structures. Together they give a generous look on a wide variety of subjects while telling concrete stories.
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Transient Memories - a performance evening by Felix Meyer-Christian and Dan Allon / Circle 1 Gallery, Berlin, Germany and Alfred Institute of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Curator: Revital Michali.
""The performance evening of Felix Meyer-Christian and Dan Allon presents a dynamic composition of time-based art. Both artists are profoundly interested in the themes of memories, violence and its cultural and personal effect. They investigate different ways of a cultural and an emotional effect of power structures. Together they give a generous look on a wide variety of subjects while telling concrete stories.
While Meyer-Christian’s work is self-reflecting and meditative, Allon’s work is explosive and confrontational. Meyer-Christian’s work Transient Memory is offering a unique observation on the aesthetics of memory, methods of editing material and authorship through a “guided tour” in his personal stories. Allon’s work, The Bar Mitzva, recreates the sensation of being a 13-year-old boy going through a traumatic Moroccan-style Jewish ceremony, in a humoristic yet direct way. The performance consisted a video screening of edited material from Allon's Bar Mitzva video (obviously the most embarrassing ones), Moroccan cliche party music, with Allon hugging, kissing and smearing "Hena", a Moroccan good luck paste, on the visitor's hands. After the "guests" got used to the alcohol and the ear blasting music, suddenly they were rudely asked to leave the gallery, as the party is over.
In the Tel Aviv version of the performance, Allon performed a slightly different setting from the Berlin version, with his parents and aunt being a part of the work. While his parents, Shimon and Miryam, greeted the guests with kisses and handshakes, Rachel, the aunt, handed them her home-made Chebakia sweets. Dan gathered all the guests in a tiny room in a gallery, threw hard candies at them and made them all drink wine and Mahia."
Special thanks: Talya Raz, Avital Globerman, Revital Michali
Photos: Adi Levy and Dafna Gazit
I am NOT Tino Seghal - a group exhibition at Nahmad Projects, London, UK
I will never say - a 6 hour performance by Dan Allon / curator: Francesco Bonami
Performance script, written by Dan Allon:
Gallery interior, throughout the day.
A 34-year-old artist is sitting on a sofa in front on a laptop. He is a white male, a little chubby, 1.75 meters tall, looks a bit tired and concerned. He wears dirty studio clothes, a pair of glasses and old snickers. He moves his feet up and down, seems cranky, as if he was playing a rhythm on the floor.
The movie he is watching is paused. It looks like a BBC documentary about the financial value of painting. He is staring at the laptop most of the time, regardless of a presence of another person at the gallery, seems preoccupied in an effort to understand the hidden narratives in the movie. He then offers a spectator to sit next to him, turn and says:
“I want to tell you about the night I bid 80,000 for this painting. I knew this painting would outshine its estimate. There was a lot of competition in the room. I knew it was a very important piece. Although there are so many of those paintings, I felt it was special. First, it is one of his LATE paintings. Out of those, only a few are signed! This is a complete <<later version>>, signed by the artist! I should make clear; I was not buying it for myself. I was buying it for somebody else. I will never say whom I bought it for”.
He then turns back and keeps staring at the paused movie.
AN ITEM ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: CLICK HERE.
EXHIBITION ON INSTAGRAM: CLICK HERE.
Thanks to: Francesco Bonami, Joseph Nahmad, Tommaso Calabro, Charlotte Call, Julia Lucerno, Julia Strebelow
Photos: Dan Allon, I Will Never Say, 2016. Courtesy of Nahmad Projects and the artist. Photo: Benedict Johnson.
WrestleMENia, for the group exhibition Judegment Territories at Tmuna Theater, 2015, curated by Maayan Amir
Actors: Shahar Farhi and Daniel Azulay
Music composed with kind help of Shani Broner
Curator Maayan Amir:
"The artists were asked to create a performance work to walk on the thin line between theater and real life, under the assumption that moral
standards can be better questioned through this junction. In this work, Allon tried to combine two themes: his childhood memories as a wrestling fan, and the Israeli hostile and macho environment. In order to make the crowd puzzled by the realism of the work, he exhibited it first, 10 minutes before the official opening of the exhibition. The work divides to two parts: the first is what appears to be an authentic bar brawl between to Israeli thugs for a minor reason, taken from Israeli daily events. In front of the shocked spectators and with no one aware in advance, they start beating each other and evoking the question – should I do something about it? One minute after, the fight exposes itself and becomes a recreation of a wrestling match, leaving the audience with a bitter smile."
NEWS FLASH, for Bad seeds of summer, group exhibition, Hayarkon 19 Gallery, curated by Dor Zlekha Levi (photo by: Hila Ido)
Curator Dor Zlekha Levi:
"In the context of an art event and group exhibition dealing with Israel's next war, there is nothing more typical Israeli then falling asleep infornt of the news on TV. The living room became an installation at Hayarkon 19 Gallery in Tel Aviv, and the loop on TV was made out of Allon's daily drawings, made during the war in Gaza in 2014."
"Progressive", for the group exhibition Gaming, at 09 Gallery, 2014, curator: Maya Kashevitz
Actress: Naama Rodriguez
Curator Maya Kashevitz:
"In the current performance work Allon creates a personal interpretation to Tino Seghal's work from 2010, "Progress". He was asked, along with other participants in the group exhibition, to create a new artwork standing on the shoulders of previous performance works given in a list. Allon used the structure of the original work – but change the content and manipulated it to imply local meaning. An actress blended in the opening of a solo exhibition, pretending to be a former art student who lived in Netanya. She claimed to be an alcoholic, and expressed her feeling to become an artist and exhibit in the gallery, asking the spectators what she shall do in order to achieve it."
Moroccan Soccer, 2016 - Originally shown at Allon's solo exhibition "Fell At Home But Don't Forget It's My Home", Curated by Sharon Toval (photo by: Goni Riskin)
Exhaustion, for the group exhibition Sinkholes, at Arad Contemporary Art Center, Arad, 2017, curated by Hadas Kedar.
Actress: Limor Grobarmen.
The image in the video is for illustration only.
Curator Hadas Kedar:
"An actress is laying on the floor, as if she fell down, and can only be seen from the balcony above. She is laying down only moving her pointing finger of her right hand. The rest of her body seems paralyzed. On the balcony, the spectators hear a sound, in a Stephan Hawking kind of voice, describing her thoughts. The text is a mixture of Hawking's conception of black holes and his ex-wife's explanation why their marriage fell apart."
Sound Work Text (including original mistakes):
The black hole information paradox is an enigma that has eluded physicists for centuries now. It has been the trigger for endless debates on what actually happens once you enter a black hole. In order to understand the paradox, we are going to leave the family behind. I decided to back out at the last second and currently watching you from afar, as you enter a black hole alone. Your Family always look at you behind the shoulder, checking how much of a failure you are. In life, in your career, in your love life. As you proceed closer, I see you slowly stretched until you eventually evaporate into a crisp. I now think you are dead and glad that I did not listen to you.
I rather felt that he was my husband and the father of my children; one does not say to one’s husband. Oh, you are so clever! I must worship the ground under your feet, or in this case, wheels. I found this kind of sycophantic attitude – the attitude adopted by so many people around him, exceptionally frustrating and, of course, it grew a lot worse when we finally had to separate. However, wait. That is not how the story ends. You are actually still alive and well, and you are venturing endlessly through the black hole. What actually happens to you next does not concern us at this point. What is intriguing, though, is the fact that you are still alive, even though I just saw you die.