Michal Rovner

Dislocations

Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow showed Michal Rovner at the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2005. At that time, while preparing for the exhibition, Rovner spent a lot of time in Russia. Ten years later, we are happy to present her latest works. Rovner created a unique and innovative language in art. She articulates the essential issues of human existence to the maximum. The work of this international contemporary art star is particularly relevant today, in a world gripped by crisis and the total displacement of ethical, social, cultural and geopolitical coordinates. Michal Rovner’s works are addressed to every one of us, speaking of the impossibility of the individual existing separately; about the fact that the life trajectory of each person inevitably connects them to those who lived and live on our planet, and those who will live here after us.

Olga Sviblova

Since first showcasing video work at her Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective in 2002, Michal Rovner has pioneered the use of the moving image as a non-narrative, non-cinematic medium for the creation of painterly images and installations. Since her landmark exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Rovner has expanded her innovations in many directions. Backward, into the historical realm defined by the ancient stones she used as both medium and context; and forward into technological systems that allow for novel expression of her imagery.

Abandoning any sense of narrative, Rovner displaces her figures in fragmented sites. Time seems like an event without beginning or end. These abstract, painterly video works explore reflections of a reality that is enigmatic and troubling.

David Grossman, the Israeli writer, wrote about Rovner’s work: ‘Her art makes us wake up, focus, be obligated, feel a throb of connection to the great march of history. She turns us into artists, creators: the tiny human figures call to us from within the stones. We do not know who they are. They are human. They plead not to be forgotten or erased. They are the living remains of human experience that is extinct, or soon will be. They are the deep human desire to leave some fingerprint, a sign, a memory. They are us’.

Michal Rovner’s (b. 1957, Israel) work has been exhibited in over 60 solo exhibitions including a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2002), the Israeli Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), the Jeu de Paume (2005), and the Louvre (2011).

In 2006, Rovner began a series of monumental structures titled «Makom» (Place) using stones from dismantled or destroyed Israeli and Palestinian houses from Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa, the Galilee, and the border of Israel and Syria. She worked with Israeli and Palestinian masons to construct new spaces encompassing history, memory and time.

In 2013, Rovner created the installation Traces of Life at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum devoted to the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Shoah. Her permanent 37×5 meter video fresco «Passages», was inaugurated at the Stazione Municipio Metro station in Napoli in May 2015. Rovner has been commissioned to create a large scale video installation at the new Canary Wharf Crossrail station of the London Tube, schedule to open in 2018.