ShadeDays is an exhibition of apocalyptic memory materialized. Tal Shoshan is creating an ancient landscape that resembles an aqua-swamp space, densely populated with objects that appear to grow from the ground or to be born from one another; some long, their ends touching the ceiling, connecting earth to sky, but simultaneously creating a seemingly looking jail-booth that closes-in on the visitor. Other objects are short, in a sort of growth or hewing process, as if stopped while growing, and are now becoming nature’s ghosts, marks in a disaster area. The space invites the visitors and pulls them, like in a horror film, to move inside it, to come close to the sculptural structures, and to observe the infinite revealed and concealed details that constitute them. Is it the thing in itself or only its shadow - that the artist follows and draws in materiel.

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Shoshan (b. 1969), a sculptress, performance artist and sketcher, is mapping spaces by creating scenes of relics, of unraveling, of signs. By working with textile materials and different textile practices, together with a unique use of industrial materials, she produces a language of soft sculpture which presents dark environments, both organic and artificial.  In each new project, Shoshan situates a journey, or a chapter in a journey, that takes place in space and in the body. The journey always occurs through sculpture that has, at the same time, a light-sketchy and a massive-substantive character to it. The space works on a vertical line, but also clearly marks a horizontal, perspective line, that is sometimes open and sometimes closed, like the present one; a sculpture-space that is a vegetative-animal body which spreads everywhere, but is about to converge into itself at any moment; an object or objects that are extra-feminine but also intra-feminine, mysterious and enchanting just as they are ordinary, simple and completely exposed.

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The whole installation is made with Shoshan’s own processing of industrial materials and ready-mades. Here, as before, she uses different kinds of plastics and nylons and melts them in high temperature, with an industrial burner. Shoshan creates a sculptural structure and into it melts the plastic material. The heating twists and influences the surface. This way, an intensive bright texture is obtained, which hints to a synthetic material with organic origins, thus resembling materials such as petroleum, tar, etc. In some instances, she creates veneers with glossy plastic-like texture, using acrylic paints, with which she coats the finished structures.

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Her starting point towards materiality in this project is common party equipment, such as different kinds of sparkling confetti and helium balloons. These constitute raw-material from which she installs new surfaces. In this way the plastic paper crumbs or the aluminum paper crumbs called “confetti”, were mixed with paints and glues and were brushed on a textile material. After it dried, the confetti became part of the surface’s texture, and was easier to work with as a soft textile sheet, from which Shoshan created shapes and structures using cutting and stitching techniques. The radiant helium balloons were randomly stitched as a “sandwich” between cloth, sponge and silk paper, thus becoming a new surface on their own, when it is possible to remove the upper layer of the paper in a wet pilling process, and to discover the radiant color underneath. 

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 Irena Gordon

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