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"Ulay"             .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  2.9.94>>21.10.94    

CONVERSATION BETWEEN GABI KLAZMER AND RACHEL SUKMAN, "ULAY" IN "OFFICE IN TEL AVIV", OCTOBER 1994

Sukman: Lets try to go back to the gray room as. I remember it, back to what happened to you from the moment you came into the office. How did you decide to relate the place as a place or as an architectural complex?
Klasmer: The difficulty was in understanding what the room really is. Because its several things at one and the same time. I was looking for a way to forget about several other things that the room is as well. For instance that it's in Tel Aviv,Replica Watches or that people will come and see it. When you put together this kind of work, you're operating within a very private situation. The fact that the work will become public obviously exerts its influence, and not always for the better.
Sukman: Are you aware of all this while you work? When you work it seems to me that you're cut off from it.
Klasmer: Everything matters and one cant be naive about it or simply block every thing out. As I remember it, first of all I wanted to paint the room, to empty it of every thing that was here before, to scrub it clean, and then paint it, and all this involves a great deal of hard physical work.
Sukman: In other words, the ideal state of the room, as you see it, is empty. A space in which there is no presence. That's why I asked you about relating to architecture and relating to place. The place it self comes with connotations. People are present, there's furniture in the room, and other objects that have specific functions and carry certain meanings with them.
Architecture, on the other hand,breitling transocean replica is somehow anonymous, objective rather than subjective. There are walls, height, width; you relate to an architectural space. And that's what interesting. When you walked in, is that what occurred to you? How did you see it?
Klasmer: I think I saw what was there. I think you're right, but its like a camera - the photograph sees everything. It sees the people and the colors and the atmosphere. It sees the things that are in focus and the things that are out of focus, what's near and what's distance. So if you say that the Office is also architecture, and a place and function, and also in Tel Aviv, and also small and a little miserable, and also that it faces the back yard of some other place, and that it hold aspirations, and is also an alternative, and all sorts of things, and it belongs to certain specific and private person, and at the same time its open to the public and yet it doesn't suffer from " over exposure ", in that it's a kind of " understatement " - its many things , and I think that this , for me , constitutes an advantage . And into all of the above, you want to introduce a certain process, or a certain work that is …
Sukman: … very private
Klasmer: Yes, I think, probably private. But the question of what to do in a given situation, the more conscious you are, becomes more complex. How do you operate within it?
Sukman: In addition to all the things you just mentioned, there's also the knowledge that it won't last. That there are clear time limits involved. It will be here for two months and then cease to exist.
Klasmer: That doesn't bother me.
Sukman: You haven't thought about that?
Klasmer: It doesn't bother me. On the contrary, there's a certain advantage in knowing that the work will disappear. That's exactly the limitations that lets you be creative, lets you make something that you might not otherwise make ' if it were intended to last forever.
Sukman: So it gives you more freedom?
Klasmer? Absolutely.
Sukman: but when you finished working , I don't know how you felt , but I wanted it to last , even though we were aware of the limitation from the start . When you finished , it was so good that I wondered how the Office could go on without it . Suddenly it was exactly what the Office had always needed , even in terms of design . If I had a dream of how the office might be designed , this was it . Forever . And the fact that it wasn't going to be forever made me very sorry .
Klasmer : That's how it is
Sukman : How do you cope with this ephemeral nature of work ?
Klasmer : It's not a problem for me . Its simply not a problem .
Sukman : You were comfortable with it ?
Klasmer : As I see , the best thing about art is that stays with us like memory or gossip. It's not as though we think we're still conceptual artists in our approach . in this instance the relation to objects , possession and ownership is obviously opposed to what we're trying to do . Its true that we're in a way dealing with a spiritual aspect of art . The fact that art is forced to do this by positioning objects and things in the world , by populating the world with things , is an obstacle , as I see it . You are, as it were , forced to present or transmit meaning through matter , through something as primitive as matter . Therefor it doesn't bother me that the installation will be taken down .
Sukman : in other words , its absence , or transience , actually strengthens its presence for the time it exists .
Klasmer : Maybe I think that creating a work within a temporary set of circumstance actually serves the work , gives one a sense of stability , of something , as it were , eternal . I'd say that I'm always striving for a dialectal situation in my work , where the work seems to be one thing but says something else . The two don't necessarily fit well together . The pictures don't always match . In just that kind of temporary situation the work is very stable . in creating a work intended to last , one might want to make it more variable , or vulnerable .
Sukman : Yes , nevertheless there was a certain feeling with your work , not only for me , but for other people as well , that this is simply how it was supposed to be . The composition was precisely worked out , the proportions correct , and it couldn't have been otherwise . That's how it had top be and it would seem that that's how it was supposed to remain . As I said , precisely that certainly that there was something temporary at the center of the work caused it to be so stable and concrete . You remember that we talked about how hard it was to photograph the work because photograph cant convey the feeling , or the atmosphere , that one experienced in the room itself . You created something new not just because it had aesthetic qualities but also , because it was as though a new kind of material had been created in the room which compelled our attention . one couldn't just look at the work and then leave the room right away . it was clear that one needed to go in and stay with the work in its place . We often try to interest the viewer with a kind of wink , by making ourselves charming for the audience . And here there was little more than two gray walls , one large and one narrow , the large one a kind of window , without any kind of nod or wink to the viewer . And just that absence of an effort to ingratiate yourself with the viewer kept the people here , made them want to understand it . People started checking to see what it was made of ,glue - on - canvas ? paper ? very few understood that it was a painting on a wall . Is that what you were aiming for ?
Klasmer : No , I wasn't aiming . I was trying to maximize the situation . Because the dimensions here were so compact I thought that this would be a good opportunity to examine that situation . The space here is a cube . The walls are very active . Most of the spaces we're familiar with have windows , recesses , openings , whereas here the definition of the space was totally clean . I knew that I wanted to do something that would be a painting .
Despite all the three dimensional works , installations , I wanted to take an extremely conservative approach - to hang two works on a wall and see how it might be possible to make maximal use of the room as a space for an exhibition of paintings , with very few paintings . For this I first had to thoroughly clean the space , to physically do it , so as to feel it . We whitewashed everything and cleaned the walls and smoothed over all the flaws , just as you'd stretch a canvas . I felt it was important to get a state of cleanliness that would cut me off from al other associations or connections , that this is an Office in Tel Aviv , that there is a backyard over there and all the other things that are packed into this place . but not by concealing these things , not by denying that the space functions as an office . The work doesn't declare , it creates . it's dialectal , it creates a new situation in an environment that is part of the work . If the walls and the floor weren't straight And clean and white the gray square on the wall could exist . It would have no existence apart from these other things , and even with everything that happened later on , including the disturbances of people coming and going , the Office and the phone calls and the faxes .
Sukman : Yes , in fact I wanted to ask you about this .
Klasmer : I was interested in having that happen , it was simply what was called for , because everything else was too perfect , a kind of sanctuary .
Sukman : You didn't want that ?
Klasmer : No , no .
Sukman : once during another exhibition that was held here at the Office , I was speaking on the phone when someone asked me to be quiet because she was viewing the exhibition . A person speaking on the phone in the office is perfectly natural , no?
As for the painting at the Given Gallery you did something similar to what you did here , a painting on a wall . After that , in the Bauhaus Show ( " Tel Aviv In the Tracks of the Bauhaus " , 1994 ) , I saw you perforating xeroxed photographs , trying to disturb the wholeness . To create disturbances in space , in a photograph , in a concept and a specific image that might be complete , and then you come along and conduct a dialogue with it through these holes . One got the feeling that you wanted to take these spaces or conduct a dialogue of space within space , using gray xeroxes .v Does this have anything to do with how you think about painting , or is it further development ? The things that you did here , the totality of the gray , the silver stripes on the wall and the drop of blue , how does this follow from what you say about painting ?
Klasmer : I didn't know that it does follow .
Sukman : perhaps not , but where does it stand ? Was this another attempt ? Was this really a painting , in the normal sense of the term ?
Klasmer : Absolutely , this was a painting . It only goes top show that a painting can also be other things . The problem is that according to our way of looking at things a painting is one specific thing . But a painting can be other things as well . It can also be an extremist political statement , it can have a message , a text . It can move worlds , change outlooks , be a spiritual or emotional device that moves the world forward in terms of perception . A painting can do other things apart from being a " suggestion " or decorative " appliance " .
Sukman : But here there was an element of decoration .
Klasmer : I'm simply saying tha6t we approach painting with limiting preconception . We know what it is , or seems to know , as though we preconceptions . we know what it is or seems to know , as though we had a given reflex for painting .
Sukman : What is a painting ? A cloth rag covered with color and hang from a nail . A canvas frame with tracks around it and something spread across it .
Sukman : Paper ?
Klasmer : Paper is drawing , not painting .
Sukman : a drawing can also be on canvas .
Klasmer : Yes , the conventions of painting . Or something looks like a painting because it has something painterly smeared across it , and then it doesn't matter what it was spread on . Or else it's stretched across a canvass with one kind of frame or another , and this is also a convention of painting , of how a painting should look , usually square or rectangular . If you look into it you'll see that this is our notion of what a painting should be , without getting into the question of whether or not it's any good , whether or not it's interesting .

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Sukman : Do you think that today there's still any point in asking the question " what is panting ?" In definition it as a field ?
Klasmer : I think there is , if you can really make a good painting maybe good isn't exactly the right word , but if you can manage to create a painting - a painting that is , again , interesting , interesting beyond all these means , maybe in that it is so misleading , in that it doesn't look like a painting . and yet it is nonetheless a painting . The painting that I do is totally conventional from the perspective of painting , and there's nothing else in it . But I'm glad that it doesn't look like a painting .
Sukman : In recent year's you stopped using figures , and you really on the camera more than on your hand .
Klasmer : I don't draw figures right now at all .
Sukman : But you did have a period in which you used figures .
Klasmer : Correct . Absolutely .
Sukman : Also words and things that had meaning .
Klasmer : I was playing with this . Another thing that a painting has is meaning . I'm trying to find another kind of meaning an abstract vision of meaning . Just as holes I make in paintings and in photographs are not because I'm looking for any spaces or anything like that .
Sukman : These are disturbances , you meant to disturb .
Klasmer : Not necessarily . I don't really bother with that . Maybe its like what happened here , when I needed first of all to paint the walls . Even if you want to paint just one wall , you have to paint all five walls , right ?
Sukman : Right .
Klasmer : The work's a little crazy . you know that maybe you'll make something else but you need to prepare everything . I think that with the hole I as appropriating the photographs that weren't mine at all . just as painting the walls of the office was an act of appropriation , before the work that was done .
Sukman : You adopt them , they become yours ?
Klasmer : They become mine in that perforate them . I think its almost something psychological . A little like a retarded child , or someone sick . You scribble on something .
Sukman : It's a little hard to believe you here , I have to admit .
Klasmer : You make the work private , by means of these holes that you make and this also process , a process altogether mechanical and impersonal . It's dialectical .
Sukman : But these holes are sort of saying that maybe you were wrong all along , as though you were trying to take something out of the work .
Klasmer : That's already on the level of meaning , meaning in the eye of the viewer . I'm responsible for what I actually do - I take responsibility for the meaning , for the interpretation .
Sukman : You want to say that the location of the holes is totally arbitrary ?
Klasmer : Totally . Sometimes I work with system . But I'll say it again , it's an adoption of strategies and nothing more . tactics and strategies . Without wanting to, you can b swayed by aesthetic consideration , but you still don't want to take them into account . You want to examine the situation while you are totally free of aesthetic interest , because you don't rely on it . Because you think that's a slippery and dangerous point of departure .
Sukman : You chose this way and of course could have chosen another way in order to appropriate these works . Maybe in turning them into Xerox on canvas or on MDF you appropriate them .
Klasmer : Yes , it's clear that we could simply announce that they are ours .
Sukman : You adopt them to a certain extent . I'm asking myself if you aren't doing this because you wanted to stop certain images in your work . Maybe you're more commutable now using already existing images .
Klasmer : Yes .
Sukman : Yes , out of an aspiration toward the absolute in your work , out of wanting an almost impossible precision from art , you prefer to use an image toward which you have no obligation , which you haven't created ? It seems precise to you because you rely on the camera more than on yourself . You adopt them because they're more accurate than anything you could create .
Klasmer : I don't in any way need to start doing what the camera knows how to do better . Why try ?
Sukman : Why do you need these photographed images in your work ?
Klasmer : They release me from the need to make them . The camera does it much better .
Sukman : And then you come along and disturb them , wound them .
Klasmer : Not always , but when I want to experiment . We know that if you leave in this process , you simply take them and transfer them and turn the work into work of you simply take them and transfer them and turn tee work into work of your own . There's nothing new in that . It's a familiar process , everyone does it .
Sukman : The issue images , why do you choose these and not others ?
Klasmer : That's question that I ask myself as well . As long as I didn't have an answer, I go on choosing these and not others . One has t9o choose something . The problem is the selection . at the moment I don't want to decide about the choice of content alone . The faces of old people or natural disasters or whatever represents Israeli society . I don't really want to decide.
Sukman : Lets go on to something else that relates to things we've discussed so far : When you painted the stripe on the official wall there was a stage in which there was a kind of diagonal flicker of the blue that I liked . You hated the fact that I liked it . And you immediately suspected that other people would come along and like it as well and then they wouldn't deal with the essence of the work which was the large gray wall or the nothing that had suddenly become essential . am I off base here ?
Klasmer : No , you're not off base . Everything influences everything else . And then you have to decide what axis the things will line up along . After the work was blue , I looked at it closely . It seemed to me that it weakened the large gray wall , that it introduced a new factor that would divert the viewer's attention , as though it were too interesting . Precisely in such a small and compact space I wanted only one thing to happen , not two . I was interested in doing one thing . That's the charm of the place - you can do only one thing in it . As far as I was concerned , one wall was enough . to try adding something would involve a compromise .
Sukman : Why did you do it ?
Klasmer : You add something that perhaps might link up with what there already is , or define it make the situation more complex . Although in fact , to my taste , its enough to come to exhibitions in which there is only one thing . In the same way that you'd listen to just one piece of music , not some of cultural event , an evening of culture , but one specific thing . To create genuine artistic interests for a passing moment .
Sukman : But the wonderful thing about music is to go back and hear a certain work repeatedly .
Klasmer : Obviously , one can return to exhibitions as well , and see it again , and again . But during the time of the exhibition or within the space that you paint there is a certain work that will take place there , it happens there , and happens with it .
Sukman : There's a conductor , Sergeiu Celibidache , until last year , wouldn't agree to let anyone record his concerts . The halls were always packed for his performances because everyone was aware of the ephemeral quality the event . Do you also aspirate this kind of ephemeral quality ?
Classier : This wasn't ephemeral , the concept doesn't apply here .
Summon : This only - once - ness .
Classier : Only - once but not ephemeral . I think that this is the authentic encounter with the thing itself . The rest isn't art . The rest is making - documentation , history , philosophy , theory , etc. The thing itself is only once at its best if it happens . An experience of an exhibition is created , of a show , of a sculpture ; it happens there , I saw it and went away and that's it . It happened to people who were in the same place at the same time and not to others . It isn't something that one can photograph or transfer or even something worth that effort . For example , when we documented this exhibition , it seemed wrong to me .
Sukman : All the photographs ?
Klasmer : It didn't seem right , and in any case the urge to photograph the works in any given place seems wrong to me . Even though we need to - need to market , distribute , want to remember . But with this work in particular it seemed very clear to me that the magic would fade the minute it was photographed . Suddenly the work would be understood through the camera , something that didn't happen when I was in the room . You couldn't quit get at its mystery . When you left with the same memory , and later on you returned and were inside the work , and when you left you didn't know where you wanted to be , inside or out .
Sukman : When I was inside the office , looking at the painting on the wall day after day , it seemed to me that you had been particularly hard on yourself . The painting was meticulous and very precise . And you were also extremely critical about the work . I saw you working . You personated the wall again and again with the same gray , twenty times , until you were more or less satisfied . It seined to me that you were trying to reach an absolute of some kind , the impossible . But when the wall was completely dry there were still " clouds " on it in several places , though while you were working you were extremely strict with yourself . Obviously it isn't just starkness and precision that make a person an artist , but having something to say , being able to create work that arouses a certain kind of excitement , if one can still talk in these terms .
Klasmer : You say " having something to say " , and here I want to clarify something- I hope that what I m making has something to say . Not in the sense of : It has something to say . what does a wall have to say , or what does a piece of paper have to say .
Sukman : Yes , that's a difficult question .
Klasmer : The intention is for other people to come and see it , or other artists . And this will clarify for them something about their own work , will clarify for people something about an experience about a certain aesthetic situation ; with ethical implications , for instance , concerning authentic and false behavior . It's possible top say that precise work has a certain value , and in that sense perhaps it's political work , or social , despite it's seeming totally formalist . So , again , I'd say that the things in a dialectal and complex fashion . I don't see them as something professional.
Sukman : But you're not overlooking the fact that the artist has to be professional .
Klasmer : The professionalism of every artist , myself included relates to what he wants to make . Tsvika wants to sew an elephant - he needs to know how to sew . The seams have to be good , so the elephant wont fall apart . For this he needs to be professional . think that painting is just like anything else , it seeks its limits .
Sukman : Still ?
Klasmer : certainly
Sukman : Seeks limits in what direction , toward another medium ?
Klasmer : In every direction .Painting is still valid in every direction . Just as in the 80s painting was one thing and in the 90s it's something else It isn't inferior to video or photography , or to installation art or sculpture .
Sukman : It's hard to define painting today , after we've been held captive by the traditional definitions . Especially since today were witnessing not exactly a return , but a movement toward and a development of figurative painting , something that we see with Richter . There is an ongoing search for precise images . I see this as a longing and desire to link oneself to the tradition , to something one can live in peace with , and enjoy , in the sense of spiritual enjoyment . You look at the thing itself , just as you'd listen to a certain piece and it fills you with enjoyment . Do you have certain thoughts and feelings while you're looking at painting ?
Klasmer : Of course ?
Sukman : It took me some time after we spoke about the blue stripe , which I liked because it was beautiful . Only after some time did I see that you were right , and it became much more substantial . It had depth and one could look at it and enjoy a much deeper kind of pleasure , as opposed to something immediately attractive . I call this the temptation of painting . One has to be careful not to make a painting tempting . I'm reminded of people who came in here - there was one who said , this I've already seen . Tell me when Klasmer does something new . At first it annoyed me and I felt insulted . How can a person just walk in the room and react without giving himself time to take in what he's seeing . And what's so important about newness in painting ? What matters is deepening our ability to see , to perceive , to perfect it , but I wouldn't want to call this new . We're not ' after all ' talking about some new and improved technology .
Klasmer : The aspiration to newness or innovation is a legitimate aspiration . You can get stuck in two situations . Not everyone can be innovative even with regard to the limited work he's doing himself . The desire to "make it new " is good , I've got no problem with it .
Sukman : Do you want to innovate ?
Klasmer : Always , But sometimes you feel you have to go in the direction of depth , not extension along the surface .
Sukman : Discovery after discovery ?
Klasmer : yes , tights the period I'm in now . It doesn't bother me the aspiration to newness is perhaps correct on a certain level , but on another level it bears witness to the shallowness of a person who thinks that everything life is innovation and invention , Maybe it's more interesting , more innovative , to enter a place where the works are boring at first , and this forces you suddenly to radically reformulate your role as a viewer , instead of expecting constant stimulation , hysterical aggravation . Sometimes it happens that there is such a demand , which sounds like criticism . But when artists decide , it isn't that they make a fully worked out decision to take one step rather than another . Its more a matter of a deep gut feeling of the artists who decide to work in a certain direction . It's not that they don't know ; and so the viewers expectations and the critics complaint are inappropriate . The criticism simply testifies to their confusion , to their irrelevance .
Sukman : It's true , it's important that the exhibition give you a sense of being there in the place , that it make you want to understand . Presence in a small space like that of the Office perhaps makes it possible to have a different kind of experience .
Klasmer : It's as though it slows down your pace for a few minutes you're suddenly slower than you were before . At the speed we normally take things in , if there's suddenly work that makes you , as it were , put on a different pair of glasses somehow slower - this is already an indication that you've done something interesting .