OVERLOAD!

The exhibition addresses the phenomenon of overload in the post-fact age, which is characterized by exaggerated reliance on social media as a source of knowledge. This tendency stems from a loss of faith in the official, journalistic, and news-oriented institutions, and from data overflow. Today, an endless stream of stimuli masks the truth and makes good judgment and clear messaging difficult. The exhibition seeks to explore how this phenomenon of overload is expressed in art, presenting projects by three artists: Ronit Baranga, Cristina De Middel, and Alon Kedem.

Ronit Baranga's sculptural installation The Walls Will Talk features a large, dense concentration of mouths filling the corner of the exhibition space. The words passed on from mouth to mouth wish to be spoken, to distribute knowledge. According to the artist, "the walls talk and pass the words on and spread the information they have. This is where the trust that our secret will be kept begins to crumble." The installation refers to an immaterial cultural characteristic – the internet meme, which replicates itself and spreads, at times like a virus. The farther one is removed from the source of the message, the greater are the spaces between the mouths. The installation spreads out like spam mail, in a way that suggests a loss of control.

Cristina De Middel's series "Poly Spam" was created after years of working as a press photographer. "The language of truth disappointed me. At some point I no longer wanted to be part of it. We should be more critical and challenge everything," says the artist. De Middel chose spam messages from her mailbox and used them as the basis of dramatic staged photographs – "robotic portraits of the senders," as she calls them. Beside each photograph showing the "portrait" of its sender is the message that inspired it.

Alon Kedem's paintings address the tension between real and virtual, construction and dismantling, mind and body. Kedem explores, as he puts it, "how, within open information systems, connections are created between you and the world, between you and yourself." His paintings stimulate the experience of surfing the internet. He depicts the intangible reality of the digital image, contrasted with his own choice – the act of painting, which is physical, sensory, and tactile. In Kedem's works body parts, screens with faces, moons and suns drift, unanchored, through space as if they were digital waste.

Curator: Revital Silverman Grun