Solo Exhibition by Yasmine Bergner | Alharizi Artists’ House, Tel Aviv | 2012
Photography: Jude Moscovitz
Curator: Tsibi Geva
The works describe a personal process in which archetypes acquire personal meaning. Spontaneous sculptural works that expand into further layers through performative action that relates to them, attempting to revive them and awaken them to new life through shamanic action.
Photography consolidates the many dimensions existing in each work.
The performance provides a hint and a sense of direction for the viewer: from what hidden, buried, and primal place Yasmine Bergner’s personal language emerges; who her cultural heroes and spiritual fathers and mothers are.
At this point, longings for a true and vital role as an artist gather with great naturalness—a human being nurturing at a specific moment an emotion, a feeling, a perception, and centering attention toward it.
Ascendants & Descendants, installation view, Alharizi Artists’ House Tel Aviv 2012
Before Ascension, Yasmine Bergner, Photography: Jude Moscovitz, 2012
This is a meditative point in the artistic process; those who have experienced it will never be as they were. They will always seek this elusive point where the external gaze evaporates, and in its place, a magnificent intuition and joy take the reins, and a sense of immense freedom and trance envelops you.
A sense of effortless art, of being. This is the peace of mind truly needed to draw things from the well of the soul. This is the place where one can identify and enjoy the therapeutic power of art for the viewer and especially for the creator.
Extension, Yasmine Bergner, Photography: Jude Moscovitz, 2012
Ascendants & Descendants, installation view, Alharizi Artists’ House Tel Aviv 2012
In these logical lives, not much room is left for wet earth, for blood, for fat, for nature, for slowness, for doing out of non-doing.
In my daily life, my wet earth—is clay.
In my daily life, blood is a scratch wrapped in a waterproof bandage, red paint on the canvas.
In my daily life, milk is the milk with which I breastfed my daughter.
Nature—is the moments of nakedness and serenity that remind me again and again that I have a body. That I am a wandering soul, trapped in a certain coordinate.
This is an awakening to a shamanic experience, for which I have no idea why I am doing it, except for a very strong gut feeling that I really want to… and I also have a feeling that someday it will be useful to learn certain magic, and that being a witch is sexy.
Ascendants & Descendants, installation view, Alharizi Artists’ House Tel Aviv 2012
My creation is visited by images and symbols that become broader, collective, universal, and slowly I take the form of an archetype—the archetype of a woman and of a human being. I am a pattern.
The magical intentionality is what draws the attention there, because magical intentionality is actually spiritual, meditative intentionality. In these moments, you forget your personality and become a ritual vessel. You are the ritual vessel.
Ascendants & Descendants, installation view, Alharizi Artists’ House Tel Aviv 2012
The Mound, Yasmine Bergner, Photography: Jude Moscovitz, 2012
You were given this garden to work it and keep it, and the gardener is the tool. The dedicated gardener must have a healthy mind in a healthy body. He must have plenty of nature, plenty of blood and moisture and internal organs. He must have inspiration and the innocence of a child, no matter what happens to him in life… and patience. And the forgiveness of a child.
From mud, water, and a divine spark, the world was created. I create images from clay. This is my way of connecting to such primal feelings.
We must find ourselves spiritual teachers in this life, and we must also be spiritual teachers to those around us. To serve as an example.
Be everything you are capable of being.
Yasmine Bergner 2012
