Project Runway 2: Pack & go

“Make it work” is the motto that the American reality show, Project Runway’s host, tells the contestants, as they set out on their grueling tasks on the way through eliminations. It seems that Margot Gran has adopted a similar motto to live by on her life path, which she shares and leads us beside, allowing us to accompany her on her journey.

In Gran’s previous “Project Runway” exhibition, at the Cliff Gallery in Netanya in 2009, there were two spaces: One, of oil paintings showing hinted figures busy cutting and sewing and the second space was an installation made up of a plywood runway reminiscent of the fashion world, providing a sense of stability and elegance. The installation was a mosaic of objects placed on the runway and on the walls of the gallery.

In her current exhibition, the installation’s essence is different and is attuned to Gran’s current path: The shape of the runway remains the same but this time she adds series of ceramic tile drawings and the elegant plywood is replaced by a Styrofoam mould, assembled in the space and seemingly temporary. The basic looking industrial Styrofoam withholds various uses for times of peril: When it’s time to move on, it can be used as an effective package for the objects within it and protected by it. In times of danger it can be used as a raft that will certainly float over the raging seas.

Gran’s attitude towards life is pragmatic and she tries to live her life as an autarkic unit; she creates a prehistory with private archeology and prepares for future times when she sets out on journeys of survival. She has detailed instructions showing how to build boxes for various content (some of them absent) / she teaches herself how to float / she stores cans of drink and has a fresh water pond to quench her thirst / she creates control buttons and a kind of comic strip, to amuse herself with and doesn’t forget the all-mighty hero – the heart. Gran’s installation offers a user’s guide for a journey towards changing and yet to be discovered worlds, where we all have the opportunity to grow anew and to climb to mountain tops – both real and metaphoric.

Sorana Schneider