2021 OMBRE REGARDANT LE SOLEIL, The French Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel. Photos by Lena Gomon
Shadow looks at the sun
Sun looks at the shadow
You look at my shadow
I’m looking at your sun
My sun looks at your shadow
Your shadow casts a shadow over my sun
A shadow descends on my face
Sun shines on your face
My face looks at the sun
The sun is looking at me
Your shadow is cast in the distance
In the distance a glowing sun
One sun, replicated shade
A layer of black paint
Bright room
In her solo exhibition ‘Shadow looking at the sun’ Ruti de Vries presents at the gallery space of the French Institute, Tel Aviv, an installation of sculpture and painting. A large digital painting is pasted on the gallery's showcase windows, facing south on the sidewalk on Rothschild Boulevard, corner of Herzl Street. A replicated figure turns her back to us and to the beating sun, looking down, hiding from the strong sun behind a glowing yellow hat. The sun is at our backs, and our shadow - cast on the window and on the pavement - is long and endless, or short and gone.
On the inner wall of the narrow and tall exhibition space is placed a triptych of a woman striking her hands to her front, hand-head-hand. The figure, segmented into three parts, flows out of the fabric’s margins, and completes its shape in a continuous, long, endless shadow, with thin legs, that turn into two parallel stripes - spreading across the walls, embracing the space, and marking a guided viewing route. Three sculptural lamps are placed on the floor, producing intimate light, as if silently observing what is happening. The hat motif - shielded from the sun, or masks the face of the figure, or
serves as a lampshade – is present in all the objects.
These sculptures are full of humor, humanity and expression. The expressive craftsmanship and the combination of materials - textiles, pieces of carpented wood, a lampshade that has undergone treatment, or handles that have been converted to be used as eyes – all testify to the ability of de Vries to create a humanised, living and breathing space, in a wide creative range.
The exhibition expresses formalistic and emotional investigations in relation to light and shadow. While outside, on the gallery windows, the figures are hiding from the sun, inside the woman triptych represents the shadow itself: the name of the figure is "shadow", Ombre in French. The ensuing interplay between artificial and natural light is also evident in the transitions between artificial shade and the natural shadow, inside the space and outside it. The shadow appears as a material, figurative and dominant surface. The natural shadow, in contrast, is changing, momentary, weightless. In fact, in "Shadow Looking at the Sun" the shadow cannot at all look: it is led, controlled in constant motion bound to the rotation of the earth and the orbit of the sun. No one can look at the sun.