Nitzan Satt

Nitzan Set invited 13 architects and artists to comment on the closing of the gallery, each in their own way. Her own work is the heart that drives the exhibition. A vertical, spartan and imaginative playground, inspired by the facility built by the locksmith Getsek Stein, who operated in Kibbutz Negba during the 1940s.

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The facility is built of irrigation pipes and tractor parts. The mast is carried from the floor to the ceiling to which pipes of different thicknesses are soldered, forming a sail skeleton. At one end is a swing from pipes and at the other end a tractor seat and steering wheel, and anyone sitting on it can rotate the entire rig on its axis. In order to operate the facility, team collaboration is needed so as to maintain balance - one would not be able to operate it alone. It is a work that celebrates the power of collective creativity, imagination and improvisation. The work in the isolating gallery  space laments the end of the collaborative vision and victory of the individual.

 

In the back of the interior is the gallery sign that has been displaced from its place in the street. A white and rectangular box, containing a neon stripe that illuminates the milky board on which is printed in blue "The Kibbutz - Israeli Art Gallery" both in Hebrew and in English. This is a miniature version of "White Cube" that, after years of exile, as a faithful guard, was inserted into the gallery as an artwork - what once signified the a pioneering era has become the rearguard. Outside, up the stairs on the edge of the street, the post of the signs stand erect, one wrapped in plastic to keep it from bleeding.

 

Excerpt from Uzi Tzur's article,
Haaretz, December 23, 2018