In the Museum’s challenging entrance lobby, parallel to the existing massive concrete wall, Ben Simon situates a highly present, omnipotent-looking object, akin to a sculptural cannon. The corrugated tin object that flirts between sculpture and basic down-to-earth architecture, however, is brittle in its literary essence. Oscillating on the borderline between sculpture and installation, Ben Simon’s work is physical, even structured for the human body, and at the same time – it is associative, invoking private experiences, intimate thoughts, memories conjured up from the depths of one’s jumbled consciousness.

The work featured in Herzliya is a second, later version of Ben Simon’s graduation project at the Midrasha Art Teachers’ Training College. The earlier work was site-specific, constructed for a space that spanned both interior and exterior, and worked perfectly in terms of the viewer’s place within the work. The new venue forced Ben Simon to deconstruct, rethink and reconstruct the work anew, differently; to come up with a solution for a classical sculptural problem.

Yoav Shmueli

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