Page 14 - Lior Gal

Flowers of Perhaps
Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts

A lac c transforma on from stone to flowers to me itself vibrates from edges of this collec on of alabaster stones harvested from a dried riverbed carving the
Tuscan hills.
H How Lior Gal came to choose these stones, alabaster precisely is like a performance linked to his earlier photographic works culled similarly from nomadic
solitary expedi ons. Gal is an ar st of uncompromising pa erns, like mys cs before him, he searches out the unseen, the li le known, the excep onally lost
objects and moments, which coalesce in front of him and if believed in the forces greater than our own, rising up before his eyes singing.

Mo
More importantly is the rhythm and tone of how his objects transpose forms from one language into another through his hands. Thus, alabaster stones become
flowers. Not just in the way these stones were used once by ancients to make lamps and windows, but with a stubborn insistence that stone is a flower. On
sub-atomic levels we now know the calcium in alabaster is the same as our bones, and these chemical proper es in the smallest elements are vibra ng at the
same level in all life forms. Stone is alive; we are one sea of lac c opaqueness all of us.

The
The constants are not holding, we have come through a period that makes this perfectly clear, so why not now let the magical and the mys cal open the
thresholds of percep on in all senses. Notwithstanding a future which is completely opaque, like seminal fluid, filled with the milky poten al of life in its
con nuity, star ng and stopping like the thin flaky layers of stone that can peel away to reflect almost transparent golden light.

An
An earlier version of this was placed in a small pie slice of land next to a concrete roadway in Leuven, Belgium, walled in like a lost bit of landscape le between
buildings and off ramps considered more important than this le -over bit of urban territory. His installa on created a chapel en plein air, by just having these
stones reflec ng daylight amidst this urban sprawl. How is such a thing possible, this is magic and few can work in this way; with humility and knowing like the
alchemists of the past who understood the way material proper es change. On some level, unthreatening, a terrain of disparate elements making one calm
whole of unexpected grace.

But
But he dares something else here; the possibility of beauty, or nature finding its roots again, the possibility of unaligned things finding a new coherence in
maybe. This off-centre approach is both awkward and charming, a way that his work sets the viewer back, crea ng a distance while at the same me en cing
you to let the past go and find new roots in this s ll very uncertain present.

This
This is the fer le ground where Gal’s Flowers of Perhaps live - the imaginary possibili es of forms changing, transforming from one that we know to one that
we can only imagine if we close our eyes and listen to what is unseen. In this half waking dream state alabaster becomes a flower, it rises from the salty waters
of our oceans. Like a seer, Gal has an insistent belief in his own percep ons, they sooth us like a lullaby and disarm at the same me.

With
With the speed of thought and belief this garden of stone flowers becomes our portal for a condi on between things, a perhaps that offers a new system of
freedom on the edges where dialec cal energies coalesce and new rela onships float into being. Offering momentary redemp on of a kind, if one is a believer
in any real sense, in any tradi on you choose.