The creative method is straight forward: first you built in the studio (as you would in an assembly line) a reservoir of “things”, made of wood and hand-painted so that each comes out similar but also slightly different. Some resemble functional objects, which have a legitimate justification to take up space in the world. The physical familiarity the viewer has with the things undergoes defamiliarization through a series of shifts originating in the visual order: duplication, symmetry, reflection, distortion, abstraction. Neutralized of their function and meaning in relation to the body, the objects become shadows of sorts – evocative of things in the world, but never taking part in it. At the same time the “things” echo Modernist sculpture, from Bauhaus and Constructivism to Minimalism. Tevet’s enigmatic objects function as fabricated ready-mades of sorts, which bares a double distortion: of functional furniture and of Modern art.
Next, the more or less fixed lexicon of shapes is assembled into different options of arrangements in space: a thing is positioned next to, on top of, inside, or leaning against a thing, vertical, horizontal, miniaturized, magnified. The arrangements determine the meaning we pour into the thing in relation to the body, to its surroundings, to itself, when the physical encounter with things is often contradictory to their visual perception. The process of decoding and deciphering the work engages the optical and the physical in a manner that forbids their split – the sight draws the body to an encounter with the works, the physical memory of the encounter with the things is projected onto the vision.
The reinstallation of the work Several Things at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, completes the tactic of the work as the disentanglement of the labyrinth, which characterized Tevet’s works in recent years. The work seems to unfold and surrender itself to the eyes and body of the viewer, abandoning the physical and visual obstacles. The move towards expansion and separation of the cluster from the center creates groups (or sentences), and paths inviting the viewer to step into the work. Significantly, and unlike other works, in which the viewer’s encounter with the work was at eye level and so intertwining the physical and the optical experience, the space in Herzliya enables the viewer to see the work from above, allowing a simultaneous, mapping view of the complexity.
However, the perception of the work as lucid, methodical, transparent and surrendering to the magisterial gaze is a trap luring the viewer to enter a labyrinth which has no beginning, ending or center. Upon entering the paths stretching ahead, the viewer becomes disoriented in an array of possibilities, illusions, alterations and games. Instead of an abstract Modernist grid, with a rational and methodical logic, the viewer enters a space of instability, undermining the object and the subject alike.
The temptation to identify a method for decoding the language of the work reoccurs in different variations, supplying the viewer with clues luring him into the labyrinth. The viewer accepting the invitation – for it is an invitation – to read the work, will face a multitude of abstract yet concrete experiences, optical and physical information, laden with contradictions. The attempt to decipher Tevet’s work activates the same mechanisms used while facing things in the world – usage, sight, previous experiences, logical reasoning, memory, application of general rules and methods. At the same time the work supplies clues based on tools and concepts of the language of Modernist art. It is these multitude and over generosity that are the source of the failure of reductive deciphering, with the absence of any hierarchy and precedence of a specific method. All the possibilities of understanding and experiencing the work coexist simultaneously, providing an experience of complex multitude, complicated, contradictory, fluid and opulent.

The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art has invited Nahum Tevet to exhibit along side the exhibition DIY*, the work Several Things, first shown at his retrospective exhibition at the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem in 2006. The juxtaposition of the shows allows a new examination and understanding of Tevet’s work in a broader context, that of the historical moment of Israeli Post-Minimalism, and that of the contemporary Israeli art scene.

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