Exhibitions

Ori Gersht – The Clearing

Jul 15 - Aug 27 2006

This exhibition brings together a new film, The Forest and series of photographs by the Israeli-born, British-based artist Ori Gersht. As with previous work the genesis for this project was Gersht's interest in exploring landscapes embedded with both personal and historic resonance.

The work was produced in the forest surrounding Kolomyia, in the Ukraine, where some of Gersht's family relatives found harsh haven from Nazi persecution. Much mythologised and idealised in the period of the Enlightenment, epitomised in the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich's works, the area was to bear witness to appalling atrocities during World War II.

The film is made deep in the forest in what initially appears to be a sylvan idyll, bathed in dappled pools of light. However as the pace of the film increases, a number of trees start to fall mysteriously in front of the camera, crashing down to earth in an overwhelming cacophony of breaking timbers and branches. Afterwards silence and tranquillity returns as if the act of destruction had not happened at all.

The Forest is shown alongside a series of new photographs taken in the surrounding landscape which combine images bleached out through long exposure and movement, contrasted to dark photographs of the wood taken facing into the sun.

The Clearing is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella in association with The Photographers' Gallery, with support from Arts Council England. With additional thanks to CRG Gallery, New York, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles and Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv.