Skip to main content
HomeArt Gallery
  • Hamburg
  • Beirut
  • artists
  • Press
  • News
  • Art Fairs
  • About
  • Contact

Search

Taysir Batniji-Gallery

Image

529/3793.jpg

Image

529/3795.jpg

Image

529/3794.jpg

Image

529/3796.jpg
Exhibition View Sfeir Semler Gallery, Hamburg

 

Image

89/638.jpg

Image

89/637.jpg

Image

89/639.jpg

Image

89/640.jpg

Image

89/641.jpg
GH0809, House 9, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

GH0809, House 9, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

Image

90/642.jpg

Image

90/643.jpg

Image

90/644.jpg

Image

90/649.png
GH0809, House 1, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

GH0809, House 1, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

Image

91/650.jpg

Image

91/651.jpg

Image

91/652.jpg

Image

91/654.jpg

Image

91/653.jpg
GH0809, House 10, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

GH0809, House 10, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

Image

92/655.jpg

Image

92/657.jpg

Image

92/656.jpg
GH0809, House 8, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

GH0809, House 8, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

Image

93/658.jpg

Image

93/659.jpg

Image

93/660.jpg

Image

93/661.jpg
GH0809, House 7, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

GH0809, House 7, 2009-2010, 21x29,5cm, Edition of 7 + 2 ap

 

 

 

Image

94/662.jpg
„Watchtowers“, West Bank / Palastine, 2008

 

 Watch Towers

The seed for this project came to me during the retrospective of the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Centre Pompidou in 2004. The remarkable resemblance between the Becher’s water towers and the Israeli watchtowers was powerful, and I embarked on a project to index this war architecture in the style of the Bechers. Following these German artists who worked beginning in the 1950s to document the disappearing industrial architecture of Europe, I attempted to establish a typology of the military watchtowers in Palestine. I wanted to create an illusion, a sort of “Trojan horse,” in which a spectator standing before my typologies would believe them to be part of the Bechers’ oeuvre. Upon closer inspection, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the technique of the German photographers and the clarity of their subjects is somehow off-kilter. Significantly, the project registers the attempt (or the situational difficulty in trying to attempt) to follow the Bechers’ method. The particularly perilous conditions of these photographs render them compromised. As a Palestinian born in Gaza I am not authorized to return to the West Bank, so I delegated a Palestinian photographer to carry out these photos. They are out of focus, clumsily framed, imperfectly lighted. In this territory, one cannot install the heavy equipment of the Bechers or take the time to frame the perfect position, let alone afford to wait days for the ideal light conditions. Aestheticization becomes a vivid political challenge, both in the creation of these photographs and in their reception, as these images challenge viewers to see these functional military constructions as sculptural, or as a part of a formal architectural heritage.

 

Image

95/666.jpg

Image

95/667.jpg

Image

Untitled, 1998, Suitcase, sand, 42 x 58 x 68 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 AP

 

Image

15/670.jpg

 

Image

96/671.jpg

Admiralitätstrasse 71, 20459, Hamburg, DE, Tel + 49 40 37 51 99 40, galerie@sfeir-semler.com

Imprint / Data Protection - Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Newsletter

Tannous Building, Karantina, Beirut, LB,  Tel + 961 1 566 550, beirut@sfeir-semler.com

Boulos Fayad Building, Downtown, Beirut, LB, Tel +961 1 444288

Design by Adaptive Theme