In his first exhibition outside of Israel, Yariv Spivak is showing a video installation with several projections.
The artist wanders through Tel Aviv at night with his camera and observes people in enigmatic and lonely situations. In the dirty streets of the multicultural and Mediterranean city of Tel-Aviv, Yariv Spivak discovers small scenes of personal or material misery or nocturnal encounters under the cover of darkness, which in their absurdity and poetic melancholy are also quite comical. The night has its own backdrop and its own magic and the “White City” its shadows. The protagonists in Yariv Spivak’s video works appear absorbed in what they are doing. They feel safe in the darkness, unobserved and uninterested, while the observing camera remains motionless with its lens wide open. The viewer, like the artist, is a voyeur from a safe distance, with neither schadenfreude nor pity, but compassion and empathy.
Yariv Spivak studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.