Tom Porat Curator: Carmit Blumensohn Concept collaboration Bar Faber
3D modeling and animation Priel Hackim
Wander, watch, listen, take photos, dismantle, separate, cut off, connect, put together,
add, assemble. Wander, watch, listen, take photos, dismantle, separate, cut off, connect, put together,add, assemble.
Tom Porat begins his creative process by taking photos and sound samples of his artwork's intended exhibition venue. He visits the space and feels it; he revives fleeting glances and discovers new perspectives, exploring its architectural elements via photography. The materials he collects are the building blocks of his creative process, through which he diligently forms a collage using digital technology. The result is a multi-layered work of art that weaves together the physical space and the associations it carries, to yield an effect that defies the banal and the obvious. It is a mood; an associative mental process.
The video works displayed here are the result of the artist's thorough research of the Open University Gallery and campus. The linked images create a complex, cryptic whole that extends across the gallery's concrete wall. It suggests a journey between galaxies, worlds, spaces, and different states of consciousness. The physical architectural area becomes one with the imaginary poetic space, filled with associations, as well as personal and universal memories. The work offers a journey that stimulates fascination, but also confusion and embarrassment arising from the transition from architectural aesthetic to that which takes place around it.
An additional series is shown on ten screens in the niches between the pillars of the gallery.
The works appear to be an image archive based on an index of digital collages exploring different virtual and real-life perspectives. Individual items documented within the space, such as a handle, a pillar, a lamp, and a staircase are duplicated or attached to other items, creating new objects; some are recognizable and some are imaginary and unidentifiable.
A gatekeeper stands guard at the border between spaces. Porat's The Gatekeeper seeks to open a liminal space conveying messages of wandering, change, search, and attraction to the unknown and the unexpected, with flashes of the dark and surreal contained within.
Porat expertly uses digital technologies to devise manipulations that increase the attraction of artworks. He invites viewers to join the journey with open eyes, free of inhibition, as we drift with him in a world of imagination, digital processing, and pleasure.