January 31 – April 25, 2011

Due to the process-based nature of the Session program, Lior Shvil: Benni – Engage and Control underwent constant modifications; the features of this page provided accruing information on the Session’s developments and will continue to track the project’s progression beyond Recess’s walls.

Events

About Lior Shvil: Benni – Engage and Control

Lior Shvil will begin two months of work at Recess’s new outpost in Red Hook, Brooklyn as part of its signature program, Session. Shvil’s video project will launch Recess’s collaboration with Charlotte Kidd and Dustin Yellin from Kidd Yellin Studios.

During his premiere US solo presentation, Shvil will adapt the residency room at Kidd Yellin into a set and production studio for his installation and video piece, Benni – Engage and Control.  

Shvil will stage and film a series of actions featuring two archetypes: the presenter/officer and the soldier/anti-terror specialist.  Both characters will be played by the artist and serve as extensions of the architectural structure and psychology of the built physical environment.

The specificity of Shvil’s architecture, dialogue and costume will create a language exclusive to the production.  The repetition of words, props and costume echo tropes of television, high fashion and combat rhetoric, generating an unsettling critique of the traditional dichotomies of good and evil, terror and security.

Bridging Tel Aviv and Red Hook, Red Hook and Soho, the artist will create a live feed of the work in progress that will appear on screen at Recess at 41 Grand Street in Manhattan.

 

About the Artist:

Lior Shvil was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and is currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York.  In 2010 he received an MFA from Columbia University.  Before coming to the US, Shvil’s work was featured in three solo shows in Israel, including a 2008 show at the Herzelia Museum of Art.  In New York, his work has been included in exhibitions at PS1, the Socrates Sculpture Park, the Sculpture Center and Lehmann Maupin Gallery.