ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 52

ICUL CTION
C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

Petra Paul & Ophira Avisar

R e v i e w

Special Issue

action. It is painting somebody red. It is
erasing a person. It is a part of an old story
about gender and the deconstruction of it.
The roles painter-object are lost in the
final embrace. hen I think of a new idea for
a work I think of colors, forms, media and
format. I think about what the viewers will
see. Then I forget all this and go along
with the situation. In "Transformation" the
issue for me was to try to show that we
are choosing a position and then we are
defending it instead of questioning it.
Transformation is an attempt to say we
are free to consider. The red erase is the
ultimate none, but it is also dealing with
our obvious symbols. It is a swift journey
between known and unknown.
Petra Paul: Improvisation is very

important for us, to act and react. I am not
an actress, who plays a play after strict
rules. I am an artist, so it is important for
me to act authentically. Not everything is
planed. Wanted to put the words on me
after I am red. It was not possible, so I put
them before, but I think at the end it would
be better. Ophira did not tell me, what she
will paint, so I was watching her like the
audience, when she for example painted
the vaginas on the white sheet.
”Transformation” deals with space. Ophira
came to my space and had to do her
painting job there. As I did not leave this
space she had to paint me as well, or how
we call it, erase me to red. Red is a very
symbolic and powerful color. After the
performance sculptor Rami Ater said, it
was very disturbing. That is true, because
it is an erasing to red. On a meta-level it is
white, black and red, the colors of a
swastika of the Nazi party. There is also a
film of the performance:
https://youtu.be/NNyzN5pN4fc
Transformation is pervaded with an
effective narrative, and your insightful

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Transformation

exploration of combination between the
evokative power of the red tone and the
act of paint a body captures nonsharpness with an universal kind of
language, to establish direct relations
with the spectatorship that goes beyond
the symbolic reminders to blood:
German multidisciplinary artist Thomas
Demand once stated that "nowadays art
can no longer rely so much on symbolic