Research for the Full Crypto-Taxidermical Index
2010-2014
Cement, salt, wax, fibers of Ceiba insignis, latex, plastic, pigment
70x120x60 cm
The Hidden Passengers, Apexart, NYC
Curator:Avi Lubin
Review at DailyServing, Amelia Rina, 17.7. 14
Review at The Villager, 3.7.14
From the curator's text:
Fact and Fiction
Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, science and art, natural and artificial is also significant to Tomer Sapir's works.
The world introduced by Sapir is underlain by a duality between the use or imitation of nature (the findings of a researcher, gathered leftovers or traces of what once was) and what is quintessentially man-made (sculptural works, use of synthetic materials). It is precisely this dichotomy, however, which makes for a space and time where Sapir's sculptures may exist, a gray area that sustains a tension between history, mythology, and fiction.
. . . . . .
Taxonomy
Dion's Natural History Museum exhibition referenced the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), the father of the modern classification system of animals and plants, as it was the 300th anniversary of his birth. The dialogue with Linnaeus and the debates surrounding systematization and Taxonomy is very significant to works by Tomer Sapir, Jenny Michel and Michael Hoepfel.
Sapir's ongoing project Research for the Full Crypto-Taxidermical Index is a lexicon of objects, mutations suspended between the organic and the artificial, the seductive and the threatening. Sapir investigates cryptids, animals for which there is no scientific proof and which are not identified in the official zoological index. He focuses on a compressed critical moment, examines the overlapping of biological and synthetic elements, and attempts to come up with the chemical formula for combining them.
Avi Lubin
© 2015 Tomer Sapir