| Time: | 2017 – Now |
| Duration: | Long Term Project |
| Artist: | Aviv Szabs |
| Medium: | Performance, Sculptor, Photography, Open digital participation |
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The mattress is where our most basic needs are met. It's a domestic object on which we sleep, dream, make love, live, and die. There, we are equal and vulnerable, it is our safe-space, and retreat. I see the mattress as a human and textile space, through which I can create an imagery and connection between two separate people. Nine hundred mattresses, from one hundred different regions from all over the world, were photographed by two hundred and twenty one people. These were collected and sent to me via phone. This task was linked by word of mouth for nine months. Collecting and sorting this information into a website creates a collaboration and area where all project participants can come together. I am attracted to abandoned mattresses in the streets. I feel the need to document them in order to interweave the countless stories that lie dormant in them. This analysis allows me to enter an intimate space, through which I try to influence our perception of daily lives in social and habitual aspects. In the public space, I dismantle the used mattresses and separate its components. I strip the outer poly-cotton layer off, the foam underneath, until I reach the metal spring - the center of the mattress. The shape of that metal springs remind me of a wire border fence, which need to change form. I untie it and rewind it into sculpture, following the rhythm its given form. The consistent photographing of the process captures intimate moments and forms in which I find the beauty and vulnerability of the human body. By exhibiting the sculptures and pictures, which look like body parts and spaces a visionary encounter is presented. It is utopian idea of a world where nationalities and fences dissolve and merge into a meeting zone of people without borders.
Horizontal Mattress Exhibition Jewish Museum of Belgium, February 6th - August 23th 2020
ME, Photographie, Aviv Szabs 2018
Screenshots, Horizontal Mattress Performance Video, Aviv Szabs, 2018
Screenshots, Horizontal Mattress Performance Video, Aviv Szabs, 2018
Photographie, Aviv Szabs 2018
Poster, Horizontal Mattress Performance Video, Aviv Szabs 2019
Jewelries, steel, 2017
Noam, sponge, coil springrolls, bubble wrap 65 x 270 x 110 cm, 2018
Photographie, Aviv Szabs 2017
Process view, 2017
A look on the list, Horizontal Mattress Exhibition Jewish Museum of Belgium, February 6th - August 23th 2020
Autopia carpet installation. Tel Aviv, Israel August 2018
Autopia carpet installation. Tel Aviv, Israel August 2018
Autopia carpet installation. Tel Aviv, Israel August 2018
Published Articles
- 06/2020 Het Niewsblad Magazine: Is Dat Nu Kunst?
- 12/2018 Terminal 21st century Art Magazine, 65th Edition: Aviv Szabs: Adopts street mattresses. By Rebecca Raz
- 07/2018 Portfolio Magazine: Alumni Exhibitions 2018: A Look at “Israeli”. By Merav Rahat