R.V.O
Rakefet Viner Omer

About the exhibition: Dr. Hagit Aldema

Mourning Rituals of Black, Blue and Lead “Any artistic action is accompanied by a sensation of the tongue entangled”, I heard her say.
This why here in “Comforts from the Heavens" we stand on our feet. For the consoler, the painting, the easel “is allowed to either stand or to sit on a chair during the time of comforting", to stand on the easel on which are placed the condolences from the heaven. “But also on top of the feet of a mode of mourning, made of blue and lead, of both ritual and practice, of what to say to the mourner and when. For example, when the comforting comes to a close one should say: "May you be comforted from heaven", but amidst the comforting and in its beginning "the consoler does not speak before the mourner does, yet if it so appear that the mourner is unable to speak for he or she sighs or feels excited etc., it should be possible to start first”. And Rakefet is comforted as she assembles her mourning from blue, and the tongue, which is usually entangles, finds ease with the lead. That is to say, the tongue is, in matter of fact, organized and so is the color. Here, this time, in this exhibition, through a color that is becoming less colored in veins of blue, black, grey and white. Through the death of a father. A silent father. Perhaps this is the death that “we do not have” and which is almost always of the Other, which allows the artistic act to organize into the Hebrew verb for nechama (comfort) and for color to appear. Indeed, this is death that makes possible or is supposed to make possible, the work of mourning as a result of this underground organization—always the one that emerges into light through the material which is the color of words. Here, “Comforts from the Heaven”

Jeff in Asia

Jeff Wall was discovered retroactively in Rakefet’s Asia. Twice. And just like a miraculous unconscious reading of his name, she found him between two walls: a real and a symbolic one. For the first time, which was the real wall, through a teacher that appeared to Rakefet as one who was indeed her teacher only after her graduation from “Hamidrasha” College. This is the real of “being a student”, at any age and in any framework, which resists a teacher. The same teacher, who was discovered retroactively as a “first important teacher”, through a comforting, yearned crack in the wall of the real, presented in his first lesson Wall’s works. She discovered Wall, for the second time, in a screen wall. It was a few years ago, when Jeff Wall was invited to exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum. The art community and the broader public were invited to an "Artist Talk" and were asked to “reserve space in advance”. In the museum, it turned out that Wall would speak in a different hall with the finance people who support the museum, that is, “friends”, and that the artists and gallerists, that is, the “public” will in fact linger at the “Asia” Hall in the museum, where the conversation would be screened on a wall-- A conversation, which the “Asia” habitants would not be able to participate in. The microphone did not work, and the presentation froze. Here is a crack that is called upon in every symbolic wall. It is neither yearned for nor miraculous. A trace of the dark skinned man, who came to fix the problem, appears on the right side. Even if Rakefet says that her practice is by all means painting, she is very much not a painter, and that from being a kind of Rishon Le Zion housewife she “declined into art”, she keeps on declining into art through art. With etchings. They speak. They speak in Hebrew with English letters, saying things like: Hamavet dome lechida kasha sheniftera (death is like a difficult enigma which was solved).