Document

On 26 February 2020, Ivorypress will present the artist’s book Document, produced in collaboration with the Israeli artist Michal Rovner. The book, published in an edition of three plus two artists proofs, comprises print on recycled paper, string and video projections, placed in a glass and metal vitrine.

This artist’s book is inscribed within Rovner’s line of investigation, exploring themes such as time, memory and writings. Concepts and mediums are interwoven and synchronised on the delicate surfaces of her works, creating a meaningful visual narrative.

Document challenges the reader’s perspective. It is only when the book is examined up close that Rovner’s characteristic typographic individuals in motion appear, only to disappear, indiscernible from a distance. These ‘typographies’ are captured in an eternal, processional loop of movements, repeated with meticulous hypnotic flux.

Rovner’s fascination with time is present in Document through various temporal dimensions: the use of recycled paper, the printing process, the kinetic masses projected on paper. The repeated human movement seems as if history is written and rewritten in an infinite cycle.

Between art and archaeology, the book offers us an enigmatic testament seemingly written in a language that has yet to be deciphered. Rovner doesn’t circumscribe her work to any pre-ascribed message, instead she allows the subtext to speak for itself.

Michal Rovner (b. 1957, Israel) is a prominent video, photography, sculpture and installation artist. Her work has and continues to define a language of abstraction, broadly addressing themes of place, time and the human condition. Rovner’s works have been exhibited in over seventy solo exhibitions at the world’s most prestigious venues including the Tate Gallery, London (1997), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1999), a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum, New York (2002), the Israeli Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), and the Musée du Louvre, Paris (2011). Her art is part of the collections of some of the leading museums worldwide, such as the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tel-Aviv Museum, Tel-Aviv; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Over the years, Rovner has received numerous awards, among them the America-Israel Cultural Foundation award (2007), the Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters honour (2010), and the EMET Prize in the Culture & Art category (2018). She has also received honorary doctorates from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2008), the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba (2015); and the Tel-Aviv University (2016).