Tel Aviv
Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery
In past sculptural installations and performances, artist and musician Guy Zagursky has pursued the theme of power and its downfall. In a video documenting an arm-wrestling competition held at the 2006 Art Basel, for example, Zagursky is crowned World Champion of Art, after wrestling with and defeating artists, critics, and gallery owners. His recent exhibition, conceived after his return from a two-year residency in Berlin and set against a background of civil unrest in Europe and reports of police brutality, featured objects that served as metaphors for potential violence. Plastic shields of the type used by riot police around the world were suspended in a row on the far wall of the gallery, each one accompanied by a pair of steel batons. When viewers treaded on the floor, they activated a mechanism that caused the batons to begin beating the shields—a metaphor, surely, for victims turning on their aggressors. …see the entire review in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
