Kunstbeeld, The Netherlands, # 2, February 2009

Gil & Moti / Haarlem
Wim van der Beek

English translation: Heleen Schröder

Last night we dreamt about two people who told us that they stood at a crossroads every morning. They stood waiting there for an hour, sometimes even two or three, until a man came and picked them up in a car. They told us that he always came in a large car and stopped right next to them, opened the door and gestured with his thumb that they were to sit down on the back seat. Then he would start the car. Only once driving would he get down to business.

This text fragment is the beginning of a story that Gil & Moti (1968/1971) wrote life size on a wall of the Vishal. The complete text forms part of an installation that also comprises works on paper, paintings and film images. The installation is in turn part of the project ‘Combined’, in which the guest curator Rein Blank zooms in on collaborations between artists. Because of the isolated placement, Gil & Moti’s installation got isolated from the other contributions. In their own territory the artists investigated the interaction between literary text and the addition of images. Or between fine art and literary additions?
What exactly happened to the men who were picked up in the car? In ‘Combined’, Gil & Moti comment on conventional classifications. Factors that usually indicate difference suddenly appear to lose their validity. In the text, the painted images of bleached out or erased faces and strange, absurd combinations of pictorial elements, the artists set in motion a mystification process. The film images of two men casting long shadows also contributes to the total disorientation and alienation. And that is precisely what Gil & Moti have in mind. Crossroads dissolve in a vacuum, people transform into unidentifiable shadows, and the distinction between literature, film and fine art disappears. Support and firm grounding are obliterated. What remain are essential, existential questions: what is true and what is not? Who are we and where are we? Who can we believe? To the last question, there is a possible vague answer: at any rate, not Gil & Moti.

Gil & Moti, ‘Combined’, 23 November – 28 December 2008, De Vishal, Grote Markt 20, Haarlem.

‘Combined’, installation overview with the contribution of Gil & Moti.