A COLLECTOR’S JOURNEY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM

Ori Gersht (b. 1967)
Ghost-Olive No. 3
C-print mounted on aluminium
image: 48⅞ x 59⅛in. (124 x 150.3cm.)
Executed in 2003, this work is number one from an edition of six

Provenance:
CRG Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004.

*λ Please see our Conditions of Sale for definitions of cataloguing symbols.

Specialist Notes:

‘With photography, what interests me is that the camera is very good at showing the here and now and then turning it into a historical memory. If an event has already passed, then the camera is helpless. One of my interests is how you can go to a landscape and capture, bring to life, something that is already gone by the time the viewer sees it; it’s a seemingly impossible feat. I am interested in this tension and impossibility’ (O. Gersht, quoted in ‘Interview with Ori Gersht’ in museemagazine.com, 20 February 2014).

Executed in 2003, Ghost-Olive No. 3 forms part of a series of photographs that Ori Gersht took in the war-torn region of Galilee, north of Israel. Gersht’s sundrenched scenes seem to have been blanched from the inside out due to their purposeful overexposure in the midday Mediterranean sun. In these ghostly images which seem to dissolve in front of our very eyes, Gersht’s olive tree becomes a direct allusion to his cultural heritage and to the ancient history of Israel. The contradiction of portraying a tree, a symbol of longevity and strength, as weak and ephemeral, alludes to the deep consequences of war and shows the tree as a symbol of survival and continuity.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.