ONLINE TUESDAYS // PROJECT FORGIVENESS

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Project Forgiveness by Ronit Levin Delgado
Online Tuesdays by Vita Eruhimovitz
Opening Reception:
Wednesday February 8, 2017, 6pm – 9pm
Closing Performance by Ronit Levin Delgado:
Sunday February 12, 4 pm

Venue:
Chashama at XOCO 325 by DDG
325 W Broadway New York,
NY (between Grand and Canal)
Nearest Trains: A, C, E, N, Q, R

Gallery Sensei invites in collaboration with The Chashama Organization a duo exhibition by Vita Eruhimovitz and Ronit Levin Delgado, with curatorial support from Isin Önol.

The two exhibitions, Online Tuesdays by Vita Eruhimovitz and Project Forgiveness by Ronit Levin Delgado juxtaposes two personal perspectives on contemporary identity and its formation, based on self-reflection and self expression. While Eruhimovitz’s work addresses these through human machine interaction and robotics, Levin Delgado’s work approaches them from instinctual and emotional perspective. Shared motives and seemingly opposing attitudes toward artistic practices resonate simultaneously in the space.

This project was made possible with the support by the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship, funded by UJA-Federation of NY and Genesis Philanthropy Group.

Project Forgiveness
Ronit Levin Delgado

“Our bodies are live blenders of heritage, history, family, rituals and beliefs” says Ronit Levin Delgado, and sets off to a long-standing personal and artistic journey to hunt down her past. Project Forgiveness is a multimedia installation that is one of the results of this ongoing journey that attempts to cope with the past and explores a variety of possible meanings of the act of forgiving, as well as perhaps a longing for being forgiven.

“My father, Julio Delgado Rojas, left my mom (born in Moldova and immigrated to Israel), my twin brother and I (at the age of 7) in Israel and returned to his country, Paraguay. He passed away four years ago, before I had a chance to meet him again. This video is a collaboration that I dreamed to create with my father, who was the lead singer of ‘Los Tress Paraguayos’, while he was still alive. An irony of fate, my father passed away on Yom Kippur, day of atonement, the purest and holiest day of the year in Judaism.” Having this very personal and deeply poignant story as her starting point, the artists takes off to Paraguay for the first time in her life, meets her paternal family, and through this encounter, revisits the cultural notions of rituals, beliefs and more subjective ones: atonement and repentance.

At the exhibition, the artist provides the audience two primary approaches to her personal story: a documentary video of her self-discovery Odyssey journey in Paraguay including her meetings with the local paternal family first time, which was documented the encounters from the first moment onwards, thanks to the accompanying photographer Mara Catalan; and a subjective approach to this journey, a three channel video installation that let’s the audience witness her collection and interpretation of rituals -mainly driven from on Jewish traditions and Native American local Guaraní rituals- to cope with the loss and forgiveness of the beloved one.

Online Tuesdays
Vita Eruhimovitz

Online Tuesdays, is an attempt at re-enacting the online activities of the artist; a playful representation of the interaction between the artist and computational entities: online Chabots.

The humorous and almost cartoon-like visual language juxtaposes with the self-reflection, conveying private and solitary aspect of online interaction.

The exhibition merges together artist’s two recent bodies of work: The Chatting Room and the Synthetic Landscapes.

In The Chatting Room, navigating within the avalanche of information in the virtual realm and multitasking between a number of browser windows, the artist acts between human and artificial intelligence, while talking to the chatbots -some of them online, some constructed by the artist herself. The selected conversations between the artist and the bots as elements of the sculptural wall installations reflect the opinions of the public community who previously interacted with the bots and provided their input into the Artificial Intelligence databases of meanings and associations.

Synthetic Landscape brings out another recurring element in the exhibition, that is the Cloud and the Pillar of Cloud. Using a clip-art cloud graphics the artists manipulated it in 3D software to regain the volume of a dimensional object. Rather than succeeding to bring back the characteristics of natural clouds, the manipulation resulted in “Pillars of Cloud”: objects of artificial nature, that lost their initial connection with the natural phenomenon. Recalling the divine and supernatural biblical Pillar of Cloud, and its later uses in the contemporary politics, these objects speak of the diverse perspectives of what is artificial, natural, and supernatural.

About the Artists:


Vita Eruhimovitz

Vita Eruhimovitz (born Kharkov, Ukraine) grew up in Israel and currently lives and works in New York and Saint Louis. Vita holds a BFA from Shenkar College(2012) and an MFA from Washington University in Saint Louis(2015). Vita’s background in computer science and bioinformatics and her interest in science and technology inspire and inform her work. She works in multiple media such as sculpture, installation, and digital media. Vita is interested in the ways the modern culture perceives nature and pushes the boundaries of the physical nature into the digital realm. She explores the ways in which human made spaces, systems and relationships interconnect with the environment that is being constantly modified by humans. Her recent focus has been in interactive sculpture and digital fabrication. Some of her projects reflect on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the secret life of algorithms. Vita’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including, the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum and the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, and at the San Diego Art Institute Museum. Her public sculpture The Evidence of Mountain Root has recently won the first place at the Murmuration Art Science and Technology festival.

Ronit Levin Delgado

Ronit Levin Delgado (born Tel Aviv, Israel )is  a multi media artist and a Fulbright scholar who lives and works in New York. Currently a 2017 resident artist at Trestle open studio residency. Levin Delgado graduated from the MFA Studio Art program at Montclair State University, NJ (2013) and holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (2008). In 2007, Levin Delgado was selected to study at Carnegie Mellon College of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. Levin Delgado has won multiple honors and awards, including 2011-2013 Fulbright Scholarship, 2016 COJECO Blueprint Fellowship, Asylum Arts, the Israeli Ministry of Culture Scholarship, Bezalel Academy Award for Excellence, and in 2014 she was chosen to be the recipient of the First Annual Prize for Bezalel Alumni. Levin Delgado has had solo exhibitions at the Frame Gallery in Pittsburgh, Guttman Museum in Israel and has been included in numerous international group exhibitions in Israel, Europe and the US, including, The Queens Museum in NY, The Russian Museum in NJ, Magnan Metz Gallery and Pratt Gallery in NYC, Index Gallery in Newark, Cardiff, Wales and Leeds in UK and Ramle Station for Contemporary Art and Hertzelilinblum Museum in Israel.