A catalogue essay for Tomer Sapir: Research for the Full Crypto-Taxidermical Index, hardcover, 280 pages, October 2018

Sapir’s oeuvre blurs the line between “nature” and its countless representations and between what is clearly manmade (culture). This theme is the central axis of his work, which he repeatedly circles around while refining the deceptive vacillation between reality and its representation, between natural materials that appear synthetic and artificial materials camouflaged as organic ones. Like an alchemist in his laboratory, he concocts materials, explores the points of intersection between the biological and the synthetic, and attempts to compose a precise formula for their fusion – to distill the actual substance of life, so that he may paradoxically use it to create a new artificial nature. 

My essay followed the diverging lines stretching from The Montauk Monster  to the Research for the Full Crypto-Taxidermical Index (2008–2010), first shown at the Haifa Museum of Art (2010) in the exhibition “Shelf Life” and from there on in a range of morbid directions, culminating in “Something’s Happened to Us, Father” (Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, 2017). This conclusive exhibition indicated the emergence of a new direction. “Only time will tell whether Sapir has reached a point of no return in the evolution of his oevure, or whether the concern with the organic Real will return to preoccupy him.”