May 4 to August 17, 2018
537 West 24th Street and 510 West 25th Street, both between 10th and 11th avenues
New York CIty, pacegallery.com

At first glance, the tiny wriggling strokes repeated in line formation in each of Michal Rovner’s large video-based tableaux appear to be legs, or the balletically pointed toes, perhaps, of variously jerking and swaying dancers. (Rovner’s technique entails an ingenious capture of what look to be vignettes of individual video deployed in an extended grid.) But these gyrating limbs could also be chromosomes bouncing back and forth. Or maybe some kind of inkblot test, eluding identification. Whatever these simplified human shapes are, they’re stripped of uniqueness.

“Evolution” is shown at both the 24th and 25th Street locations of Pace Gallery. In both venues, Rovner’s compelling formats vary. The video-based tableaux predominate, but there are also several static images, printed on paper,Cipher 2 (2018), for example, that resemble  barcodes or smudged lines from a typewriter. There are video-based sculptural works and a full-room video installation, Mechanism (2018). The immersive experience of this last piece, though silent, synaesthetically conveys a visualization of static sound in the sudden shifting of the small black figures. Like Mechanism, but in tableau format, Matches 2 (2018) also features the abstracted human blobs, this time red instead of the ubiquitous black and white. They gesticulate like specimens trapped behind glass that are aware of being watched. The forms become an eye test: You try to make out letters or some recognizable hieroglyph within the constant movement, but the wiggling, blurred digits resist definition.  

In Urgency (2017), where the shapes are still writhing and waving, red splays across their blurry heads like a heat signature – splotchy and angry. These figures, in contrast to the vaguely  comical, insistent buoyancy that pervades the rest of this show, appear desperate, whether or not they know they are being targeted.

Elsewhere, the abstracted forms act like language. Take Gmara (2018), for example. This consists of a vitrine encasing a projection on stone tablet in which the person-smudges operate like lines of text. Gemara is the analysis and commentary section of the Talmud. This title, like so many of others in the show, complicates the meaning of the piece, casting not only archival, but also religious connotations. This referentiality, as well as the distinct line work that separates the blobs, connects “Evolution” to Rovner’s larger body of work by evoking  political and social issues: separation through borders and conflict, individual and societal relationships, and human migration. The restrained movements of the figures, as well as the lack of obvious personhood and individuality, might bring to mind the Israel-Palestine conflict, for instance, a topic on which Rovner (who is Israeli) has worked before, as in Makom (Place), 2006, which used rubble from both Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods to create a new structure.

The proliferating interpretations brought to mind by Rovner’s abstracted forms complicate the title of the show. Does “Evolution” refer to human evolution, as in the growth of either an individual, a society, or a species? Or are we in the political realm, confronting issues of shifting alliances and leadership? Or perhaps there’s a quip here about a lack of evolution: human stubbornness, with the same indistinguishable blobs bouncing back and forth without making progress. Rovner’s rhythmically meditative and yet thematically challenging works encourage the kind of slow looking that allows for multiple interpretations. Her morphing forms legitimize each of these possibilities, as well as others.

At both venues varying dimness in the lighting creates spaces for thoughtful contemplation, as well as a mood which ultimately turns the viewer into a kind of embryo, allowing us, too, to evolve.

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Palestinian artist Jawad al Malhi watches the activity on the street from his balcony in the Shufhat Refugee Camp in East Jerusalem, where he was born and still lives. At times it mirrors what he sees in television coverage of events across the Middle East, and it reminds him of his own fervent engagement with politics in the past. Young men on the street, mostly adolescents, stand around nervously waiting for something to happen, for an encounter that will set off an action in which they can participate. When it does, individuals who may not even know each other suddenly come together as a group, expressing their passion and acting as one. But when the event is over the solidarity disappears and they drift apart, uncertain and without purpose.

This fleeting moment after an event — the atmosphere, the body movements, the gestures and facial expressions —is what al Malhi seeks to capture in his paintings, viewing the crowd as if through a wide-angle camera lens, and using large canvases with minimal colour. It must be rather like trying to paint the sea after a wave has crashed, when for a moment the waters seem to have no clear direction.

There is hardly a hint of the environment in these paintings, and a powerful absence of architectural space, just the dust and glare of an exposed public space. The boys seem to be wandering around nowhere. This is in total contrast to Al-Malhi’s previous body of work, a series of panoramic long-distance photographs that show the buildings of Shufhat packed claustrophobically close, and with no sign of people. Entitled “House No. 197,” they were exhibited at the recent Helsinki Photography Biennial, and at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

The youths depicted in his current exhibition, “Measures of Uncertainty,” could be hanging out near the Israeli checkpoint a short distance from al Malhi’s house, but in conversation the artist says that they are not necessarily Palestinian: they could be in Cairo, or Istanbul, or anywhere in the Middle East. Dressed in the generic t-shirts, hooded jackets and jeans of kids anywhere, they live in what he calls “Coca-Cola time,” perhaps meaning a mixture of expectation and emptiness, a mood as international as their clothes.

Coming into the elegantly renovated Al-Ma’mal gallery, a former tile factory, in Jerusalem’s Old City, the bleached, creamy colours of the paintings almost merge into the stone walls and there is a general sense of stillness, suggesting peace and harmony. At first sight, you could be looking at all-male scenes on the fringe of a football or cricket field. But a closer study shows the deep, naked unease in the expressions and body movements of people caught in suspense, floating in a toxic, anonymous haze.

There is a pervading sense of watchfulness. The characters watch each other and us. They seem aware of being watched — by the artist, by television cameras, by the international community. Sometimes a gaze catches the viewer’s eye and creates an emotional link. We find ourselves watching rather than viewing them, but with all this attention, they don’t know what to do. Many of the characters are portraits of people al Malhi knows — boys who work in a local garage or tire factory, for instance — which invests a strong, contemporaneous reality to the work. The characters express confusion and bafflement; they scratch their heads and look around, seem lost, stunned, mildly indignant, filled with trepidation. Each one seems isolated in his own restless dream.

But the dream, says al Malhi, doesn’t exist. What does exist is the huge potential energy, even power, within the crowds on the street. “They are looking for answers,” he says, “but perhaps should be trying to find questions.”

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