The Coming Community

Eli Gur Arie

Eli Gur Arie's works are concerned with the tension between nature and culture and between science and fantasy, while examining the imagined future of a society whose relationship to nature has been distorted. In the installation The Old Runway, Gur Arie creates an artificial habitat that alludes to a current ecological crisis: the disappearance of bees from their nesting areas. The figures and animals in this work appear as remnants of world in which the attempt to resolve ecological crises involves a radical form of intervention bordering on the absurd. In the series of works "Nesting Stories," insects nest on industrial waste, as well as inside a reproduction of a work by Abel Pan, one of the most prominent Jewish artists during the early 20^th century. In this world, nature finds alternate uses for various cultural artifacts. In this manner, Gur Arie critiques the attitude of Western, capitalist society, and undermines its underlying thrust to consume. One can imagine the post-humanist identity of the community inhabiting this world, in which the borders between nature and culture are blurred.  

Born in Israel, 1964; lives and works in Tel Aviv