« Place (After Micha Ullman) (2018), by Avner Pinchover, references Ullman’s work and resonates with it, but is differentiated from it in several ways. To begin with, it is important to note that the work is based on a seventh action that Ullman carried out in the 1975 event, but whose documentation has been lost. Sand is the recurrent motif in Ullman’s oeuvre. Pinchover frequently works with cement powder, as he does here as well. In a space similar to Ullman’s, and from an identical camera angle, Pinchover is seen meticulously piling cement powder into a mound, and then abruptly leaping onto it, jumping on it over and over, flinging and hurling the powder every which way, to a point of self-exhaustion. What prompts an initial smile continues with an intensity that alters the viewer’s range of emotions vis-à-vis the action. Pinchover is thus able to move from the point of departure of an homage and reroute the work to a highly personal cathartic place of the sort that pervades other works of his, such as Cement (2019), Riot Glass (2019) and Chairs (2018). In reference to those works, I wrote in the catalogue for “Traces VII – Action Line,”that “the repercussions of the flinging, throwing, casting act, and the encounter or clash between the different substances, generate an action drawing in the space, one which is only partially controlled, crossing invisible boundaries between intention and chance, lyricism and violence. »

Extract from Walk Without Fear by Hadas Maor

in BLACK STAR, from The Haaretz Collection