Dr. Christoph Kivelitz/ Museum Bochum
Out of the Catalogue: The Right of Images-Jewish Perspectives in Modern Art (p.281)
Exhibition: September 21st, ,2003 - Janurary 4th, 2004

"Gil & Moti come from Israel, just as Boaz Kaizman and Dodi Reifenberg. They now live in the Netherlands and thus in an extraordinary liberal society, where they have made their private life theme of their artistic work.
With the "Gil & Moti Wedding project" this is realised to a particular extent. The whole ceremony of the wedding, starting from its preparations for the participation of the male - bridesmaids to the public performance of the wedding ceremony by the mayor of Rotterdam, becomes an artistic event in form of a video work. The video gets to be the central piece for an installation, in public space as well as in the museum. A huge bed stands for the intimacy associated with the marriage of two people. A video screen and a series of oil paintings are placed around the bed. The paintings show the conception the artists have of themselves but broken up ironically, as they are painted concertedly in the stile of kitschy postcards, far beyond any art historical standards. Hereby they question their own identity as an artist and break an esthetical taboo.
Another alienating factor of the presented reality of the wedding is the fact, that it is two men performing the traditional ritual. And in this case two Jewish men, who provocatively give the festivities the character of a Jewish feast. The wedding gets to be an event that on the one hand revives the traditional practice in form of a spectacle and on the other hand intriguingly shows the pretence of these same practices to the western world. The two artists match each other in their outfit, they function as a mirror one of the other and by that deregulate the claim of artistic distinctiveness. The private and the public, the religious and the profane, the artistic and the mass-kitsch product are put into a context, which questions the difference between living areas and individualities and also aims at shifting estimating criteria.
In this provocative approach the right of individuality independent of descent, conventions, determinations by traditional values and sex is looked upon from an ironical distance but nevertheless vehemently claimed"

Translated from German by Kim Zieschang