Ayelet Carmi and Meirav Heiman

Ayelet Carmi and Meirav Heiman

Icosahedron, 2016

Installation, mixed media

Courtesy of the artists

This work is a joint project by artists Meirav Heiman and Ayelet Carmi. The icosahedron,* constructed out of bamboo rods, is moved through the space by seven figures pushing it by changing their posture and balance. Thereby, the artists turn the geometric-mathematical form into a vessel for the body and its actions. The vessel accumulates great tension between the concrete and definite, on the one hand, and the illusory and spontaneous, on the other hand; between the possible and the impossible. The motion creates a combined, shared choreography.

Heiman and Carmi create a motion environment that is at times deceptive, challenging the force of gravity. The Sisyphean effort involved in the icosahedron's advance, the complex communication between the figures, the exertion of muscles, the body, the arms and legs – all these are revealed from different angles using an array of documenting cameras. From a bird's-eye view, achieved using a camera crane, the path of movement can be seen marked by a star leaving a trail of light. In this way, the entire filmed event becomes a magic journey, a colorful pageant, a multi-dimensional space.   

Heiman's and Carmi's work is reminiscent of attempts made in Israeli art in the 1970s. Artists such as Reuven Berman, Micha Ullman, Michael Druks, and others returned to the basic matrix of the square or the cube, with which they sought to define space. In those years, Igael Tumarkin addressed the theme of scientific progress since the Renaissance, adopting the image of Albrecht Dürer's truncated polychronic cube as a representation of the essence of human rationality in the service of science and culture.

The postmodern trend in Israeli art addressed non-mystical and non-magical geometric shapes, fated to be trapped in an ever-recurring, closed form. It was as if these artists created spaces of disorientation, emptiness, and indifference.

Heiman's and Carmi's work is loyal to the utopian vision of the basic geometric form. The figures move the icosahedron by means of a combined effort, raising the question of the necessity of interpersonal communication in the process of human progress – a question that has arisen in the artistic discourse, which often addresses the necessity of a collective narrative. The two artists' work seems to draw on a geometry of ideal forms that symbolize social ideals and the desire for good. As such, it deviates from the anti-idealistic, dystopian trends that until recently dominated postmodern Israeli circles.

Ayelet Carmi was born in Kibbutz Beit HaShita, 1967; lives and works in Herzliya

Meirav Heiman was born in Jerusalem, 1972; lives and works in Tel Aviv

* An icosahedron is a polyhedron with 20 faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle. The icosahedron has 12 vertices, 30 edges, and 20 faces. It is one of the Platonic solids.