אבי שפרבר - Avi Sperber

Three massive impressive sculptural installations comprise this exhibition, which is full of movement and imagination and fits well with the fabric of the Tel Aviv Opera House. This is a modern building whose inside was designed with originality and boldness by the avant-garde architect Ron Arad. This fact is important to mention due to the way the installations of stone and metal are incorporated into the interior which is built in the same fashion of curving metal with stone walls. The installations are similar to organic plants designed under the influence and inspiration of the landscape. They create a yearning for the natural environment, the wild beauty of nature so far and detached from this massive urban building.
Avi Sperber erects installations that create a special rhythm in the eyes of the observer. His social involvement and presence as a prophet warning of the need to protect the land, its landscapes and quality of surroundings give rise to sculptures that mimic a group of people – a crowd that creates an allegoric human metaphor. In this exhibition a new and dramatic presence is determined by rows of sculpted reeds, elongated bodies made of thin but strong metal with heads of wheat made of perforated stone. The sight is reminiscent of stalks of wheat/figures – a group on a traditional and symbolic journey. There is a hint of the unfinished trek of the Jewish people from place to place, the need to camp, to build a new and strong country, to create a true and permanent bond with a specific location.
The Hebrew word “bar”, which means wild, is synonymous with bread, food and a continuous and cyclic crop. According to Udi Rosenwein, the curator of the exhibition “Wild is also an uncultivated field, a field outside the city, a place where wild animals live and where wild plants grow. Wild is an area untamed and free, free from the bonds that man places on himself”. In the installation, a field of wheat is “raised” composed of white Greek marble and steel building rods. “The Gathering of Tishri” – seven bundles of recycled sprinkler pipe and river pebbles – symbolizes the assistance provided by Israeli technology to arid areas worldwide. “Wild” – is composed of a group of marble wheat sheaves, stainless steel pipes, beach pebbles and sprinkler pipes. The movement of the sculptures hints at the movement of stalks in the wind and alludes to the wind of freedom.

Udi Rosenwein, Curator