Keren Gueller | Coral
March 14 - April 20, 2019
Solo Show: Keren Gueller
Curator: Leah Abir
What is a good life? What is
Divided into multiple scenes, Gueller's main work details the unbearable length of a Canadian wedding. Without showing the wedding party or the matrimony service itself, she presents us with ten films that closely document the long process of posing for photographs throughout the wedding day – the bride poses with the groom, takes a picture with the family (including children and babies), the bride poses once again with the male guests only, then poses with her bridesmaids, all wearing Coral dresses (a color that gave the exhibition its title), and finally – the bride throws her bridesmaids the bouquet, and they jump to catch it. The woman dressed in white, whose makeup is fixed and whose smile is tired, shares the work's focus with the wedding photographers – the planners and announcers of the photographic compositions, who also direct the wedding guests in performing these compositions.
Both rituals featured in the exhibition – the wedding and the house marketing – require professional photograph, and Gueller places her camera right beside them. She does more than relate the crucial role photography plays in constructing the ritual; she deprives the event of the "decisive moment" of still photography, to which all the participants are busy preparing for.
From the very start, unlike the actions of the wedding photographer, Guller's actions are not aimed at an audience that is familiar with the photographed people, that will identify the figures in the photographs and that for which the photograph will function as a catalyst for personal narratives.
Wedding photographs, like those of the staged houses, intend to deliver more than a one-time event – a way of life, a lifestyle. In both of the works featured in her exhibition, Gueller highlights the principle of doubling and repetition – the dual and the series – the omnipresent similarity that marks the relation between the personal, familial, community event to the social, national, religious and cultural order. The artifice, the dressing up, the fixing of one's self and
Keren Gueller (b. 1976) lives and works in Tel Aviv. She graduated from the MFA program of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and from the BFA program of Hamidrasha College, Beit Berl.
Read More
Links
Keren Gueller, Coral, 2019, still from video
Keren Gueller, Coral, 2019, installation view at RawArt Gallery. Photo: Lena Gomon
Keren Gueller, Coral, 2019, installation view at RawArt Gallery. Photo: Lena Gomon
Keren Gueller, Coral, 2019, installation view at RawArt Gallery. Photo: Lena Gomon