Naama Arad’s ‘Har Hazofim’ quotes the view from the window of the fictional Frank Lloyd Wright creation from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘North by Northwest.’ A peach-toned silken curtain intervenes between our gaze and the Xerox copies pasted to the opposite wall on which landscapes can be seen. The paternalistic presidential visages of Mount Rushmore and the modernist architecture both see their material and ideological texture inverted in the most tender of feminist veilings. The title of the work refers to the mountain of the same name, and Israeli enclave in East Jerusalem that houses the Bezalel Academy of Art founded in 1906.
A t-shirt of stiff leather is imprinted with the digital interface of a videogame. ‘Big Daddy’ takes its title from the self-selected user name of the 22 year-old star of Dota 2, which with over 11 million players is at present the biggest online strategy game. The imprint of a screenshot on an animal skin, which takes on the form of armor for online players, breaks through the barrier between the digital sphere and the physical body of the player. The cohesion of the online community of Big Daddy and his millions of fans feeds on the repeated rehearsal of their identities as digital fighters and athletes. Emphatically, Timo Seber is commenting, with his fictional armor and the possibilities of fitness he presents, on the disembodiment of digital sport.