Site A
2006
two metal-framed LCD screens, metal shelf, two computers, and digital video
© Michal Rovner, licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007
courtesy of the artist, PaceWildenstein, New York
and Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

MICHAL ROVNER Israel / United States of America
Auckland Art Gallery - NEW Gallery

I went to the oilfields because after all it is in the centre of the world's attention. In the course of the process I understood that the oilfields are not the issue, but just some kind of an undercurrent, an optional point of reference. For me the work relates to a timeline of changes, a seismograph of life, private or global or another form of life with the consecutive changes which occur. Most of my works deal with situations, which are not changing. Here it is a situation, which is not stable even for one second, and its consistency is expressed in an endless, unstoppable tension between what is predicted and what seems to be unknown.

- Michal Rovner, Fields of Fire

Background

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1957, Michal Rovner currently lives and works between Israel and New York. In 2002, her work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective, Michal Rovner: The Space Between, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2002, accompanied by a major catalogue. Rovner represented Israel with Against Order? Against Disorder?, at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003. Other recent solo exhibitions include In Stone, PaceWildenstein, New York, 2004; Fields, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2005; Fields of Fire, PaceWildenstein, 2006; and the site-specific video installation Living Landscape, Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyr's and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, 2005. Group exhibitions include Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, 2004, and touring nationally; Techniques of the Visible: 5th Shanghai Biennale, 2004; Haifa Second International Installation, 2004; Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art, PaceWildenstein, 2005; and A Curator's Eye, Los Angeles Museum of County Art, 2006.