An essay about Tal Amitai-Lavi’s threds works for the book PULLING THREADS, co-edited by me and Amitai-Lavi, published in conjunction with “The Pulsating Room,” Ramat Hasharon Contemporary Art Gallery, June, 2023

First paragraph of my essay: Magic and illusion are key words in Tal Amitai-Lavi’s oeuvre. The core of her work is anchored in material and spatial metamorphoses. For nearly two decades, she has been using airy, transparent materials, devoid of color and aura, whose presence is incorporeal, amorphous, fragile, and quivering—kinetic sand, baking soda, lighting, sewing threads, and most distinctly nylon strings—as if she were working with thin air or sculpting in light beams. The magical secret lies in the transformation she performs within a given space with a minimum of material means and a maximum of subtle laboriousness. With every new exhibition she seems to distill, reduce, and peel off another layer of matter, perform yet another reduction in her use of materiality and color in favor of creating an optical and poetic illusion.