The Rhinos
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Yoav Efrati
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, The Fifer, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Antique merchant, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Muselmann, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Border police, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Suicide Hitler, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Shabbtai Zevi, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, The Collector, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Violent accident, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Merav Kamel, Halil Balabin, Pleasure, 2015, Cloth sculpture
Installation view
Installation view
...Huddled in the gallery space, stands are propped up on either side, carrying paper statuettes: figures and divinities, some dancing, some castrated; bodies swaying and distorted, erections. Call them what you will, but to us they are all rhinoceroses.By their very bodies, each of these rhinos tests the limits of permissiveness and interdiction, like harbingers of a reality that Israeli society has been trying to obscure, or by contrast, to endlessly hail. But despite this carnage, despite the clamor of lusting, horror and indulgence, each of these figures, now frozen for good, carries its own fate, arrested in the joy of its own particular, consuming passion; a passion that, washing through their stitched-up bodies, overflows the space where the viewers stand.