Matter of Time | Exhibition in the 24th Nidbach Series

A graduate with honors from the Department of Screen-Based Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Eden Bezalel Habas’s exhibition consists of video works that examine the way reality is reflected through the screens that surround us. Reality as a scene of action, where the laws of physics operate alongside accelerated technological developments, with man in the middle, concurrently watching and being watched on screens that have become an integral part of our lives. The mobile phone screen, which has long since become an extension of the human body, the multi-channel television screen, the cinema screen (which used to be called the “big screen,” and is now fighting for its place), the computer screen, command and control screens, which constantly monitor and transmit images that are captured by the cameras scattered profusely in public and private spaces: on streets and roads, in houses, shops, public institutions, and parking lots, as well as in open spaces and in uninhabited areas; on the beach, on cliffs facing eagles’ nests, in the dens of desert cats, in forests, and on snow-clad mountain peaks.

In the current era, where an incessant flow of images and multiple screens have become the “natural” environment, the aesthetic expression of the information revolution cannot be contained. In his first solo exhibition, Bezalel Habas sets out to explore the crisis of trust between the viewer and the screen. By editing screens, which are inserted one into another, he presents familiar natural images: sea waves, vegetation, and clouds, raising questions about the gap between the world and its digital representation on screen, about patterns, alienation, and control. The screens in the video works appear futuristic and primitive at the same time, as if telling us about what was or what is to come.

Efrat Shalem