Barak Zemer

Barak Zemer uses the camera as a mapping device—an instrument that surveys, marks or manipulates, allowing him to define his reality. Through this tracking process, Zerner ammases a vast and incoherent collection of items. He moves these artifacts around and builds sequences until a fictional reality emerges. In this reality the hierarchies between animals, objects, and people disappear. Torn carpet on an elevator wall turns into flesh, his own hand transforms into a gruesome plant, a dead fish turns into a live monster. The world conveyed blurs the line between what may seem stumbled upon, staged, or manipulated. It holds the threat of collapsing the distinction between what is perceived as alive or dead, good or bad. The images become an isolated system of symbols that displace notions of time and place.

His work has been exhibited at Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, The New & Bad in Haifa, and ltd los angeles, among others.

Courtesy of the artist