Magnetic
May 4 - June 3, 2006
Matei Glass

Untitled from The Other in Palestine by Matei Glass, Giclee' print, 2003

Magnetic

Tous les arts sont fondés sur la presence de l’homme; dans la seule photographie nous jouissons de son absence.
André Bazin, Ontologie de l’image photographique.

Magnetic, by Matei Glass, presents a selection of large format images from his book The Other in Palestine (Actar, 2003), comprised of sixty-seven photographs taken in Palestine between 1997 and 2001 as well as a thirteen-minute video, Magnetic Identities (2004). Together they form a reflection on identities, which cannot be mutually exclusive, and memory when it is inevitably superimposed. Matei Glass was born in Montreal, the son of Jewish refugees from Romania, Holocaust survivors whose support for Israel "could not be other than unquestioning." While these images are mainly of Palestine and Palestinians, they are also somehow of their author as he attempts to redefine the other. "In a sense it is my need to fill in the blanks in my personal and collective memory that brought me to Palestine. . . I needed to walk through the mirror to see utopia’s other side, its forgotten twin."
Matei Glass explores the autobiographical dimension of photography. He has drawn a diary, which examines the duality of absence and presence, looking outward in order to look inward. Indeed the French critic Magali Jauffret has written, "Matei Glass is an heir of Robert Frank. We see it, feel it and are affected by it."

Magnetic is the construction of a geography of absence. The immaterialized presence of a shadow fades and disappears to reappear here in a narration of distance and proximity. The autonomy of the Other is revealed, freed of the religious connotation of revelation, within the space that Emmanuel Lévinas has called "the ethics of the Other." Here, the image of the Other appears not only to find an alter ego but also what one is not. We are confronted with another self. In the infinite asymmetrical space where the dialogue between selfness and otherness becomes possible, the Other questions the self and defines it.

Here the photographer becomes the scribe of a flowing question and a swimmer in a magnetic field in which every subject exerts a polar energy. Attracting and repelling poles are in constant transformation, iron and steel evolving in a common sphere.
Every image is structured as a linchpin in the cohesive axle of this magnetic field, creating an accelerated flow of mutual questions. Yet, the narrative structure of this body of work follows an eclectic stream of consciousness. We encounter the image of a crowd deploying from within its interior and collective energy, constellations of simple and multiple movements, centrifugal and centripetal at once, all pivoting around an innermost force and all revolving from different gravities.
In another image, on the grounds of an asymmetrical crossroad, the (road) signs become objects, "objects of strike," as in Jean-Luc Moulène’s "Objets de grève," and mark the violence of reality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Road signs here lead to nowhere but to a fragment of reality, to look out to, to look in from. We encounter a photograph of a field of stagnant waters from which a child emerges, and another of beaches where bed fittings flap as restless sun-bleached flags. From the first photograph, taken in Jericho in 1970, of a dancer with the eyes of a child, to the image of a man passing in front of a whispering wall, made nearly thirty years later, the photographer’s tempo is marked by patience, fragility, and silence. In front of the photograph the self stands naked, a translucent moment in that gap between the self and the other, out of focus and hors-champ, presence and absence.
Magnetic Identities was filmed in one long night, at the Erez Crossing at Gaza weeks before the beginning of the second Intifada. The synopsis for this thirteen-minute video loops reads:
"Every night between midnight and 7 AM a constant flow of some 35,000 Palestinians walk through this two-kilometer security tunnel on their way to work in Israel. The process takes between two and four hours. Without a magnetic identity card, access to work in Israel is denied.
Israeli security services determine who receives a magnetic card and can revoke it at any moment without explanation. These measures are often used to pressure Palestinians to inform on family members, neighbors or friends.
At times of conflict, Israel maintains this artery closed."
Israelis and Palestinians, border guards and workers inhabit this security gauntlet. This is a nocturnal space of transition, of interaction and imperative exchange, traced by magnetic paths. Human currents elapse from one pole to the other onto the same troubled field, in the tunnel’s artificial light, and set the alternating pace of the sequences. Through the hypnotic beeps of the magnetic identity cards a soldier’s voice repeatedly asks in Hebrew: —"Judith?" answered by "Yes. What do you want?" Is this the echo of a larger question?

Matei Glass convenes, moving from black and white to colour, a flow of both imprinted and erased figures interacting as orbits in a dialogical silence. The images of Magnetic appear as a singular weft of time and space, they are images of a ‘faraway’ as close as it can be, in Walter Benjamin’s terms, an aura of the elusive tracks of absence.

There’s no language to the silence of Magnetic. It is the result of image making as an extreme experience, on images and beyond images, an inward journey.Jenny Gil Schmitz

This exhibition is co-presented by Occurence Gallery in Montréal, QC and Gallery ConneXion in Frederickton, NB.

Matei Glass (Joseph Winterfeld) was born in Montreal in 1956. He left Canada in the mid 80s for Paris, where he began to publish and exhibit his photographic projects. While initially dealing with the documentary and the historical, Matei Glass’s images have come to include an autobiographical dimension. His recent work explores the tension between the personal and the political as it examines the representation of absence and identity. His images, installations, and video work have been exhibited internationally and are to be found in both public and private collections. His book The Other in Palestine and video Magnetic Identities, both part of the ongoing project Magnetic, were nominated in 2004 for the Prix du Dialogue de l’Humanité, at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie at Arles in France. Matei Glass has lived in Barcelona since 1995.

Jenny Gil Schmitz lives and works in Barcelona, She holds a masters degree in Philosophy of Aesthetics from the Sorbonne and graduated from the National School of Photography in Arles, France (ENSP). As an artist, she experiments with the photographic medium in its relation to the narrative. As a curator and writer she has collaborated with various institutions on photography and contemporary art projects.Matei Glass would like to thank the Drake Hotel for their generous support in the form of an artist residency.


EXHIBITION BROCHURE AND ESSAY BY JENNY GIL SCHMITZ