TAL AMITAI-LAVI

"The Pulsating Room" is a site-specific installation designed for the former Well House at the Ramat Hasharon Contemporary Art Gallery. The works divide the gallery into a two-bedroom apartment of sorts, converting it into a domestic, illusory, and deceitful space that offers memories and a fantasy of a home.
The architectural elements and objects on display are made of transparent, airy materials, devoid of volume or weight. Despite their minimalistic appearance, their creation involved a great deal of work: it took months to intertwine thousands of thin, transparent nylon strings to create a hovering staircase, a pair of windows, and a curtain. Alongside them, animation works are projected, consisting of elusive beams of light choreographed for building up and disintegrating – a carpet whose forms constantly change, a crackling fireplace, and ripples on the surface of the water beamed onto the wellhead.
The exhibition undermines the sense of stability and security associated with the concept of "home". In Freudian terms, this is the "Uncanny", whose familiar components have undergone an unsettling defamiliarization: the portals lead nowhere, and the objects are not functional interiors but rather appear as ghost objects infused with a soul.