Tomer Dekel

Tomer Dekel (b. 1985) is an installation artist who lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Dekel works mainly with Israeli landscape materials and processes them into sites or arenas of happenings. The experience to which Dekel is moved in his placements is multi-sensory, creating the feeling of being in an amplified and enhanced environment, or within a particular scene. The range of experience usually moves between themes of violence and subtle, the polluted and the pure, disintegration versus growth, in order to create a post-apocalyptic feeling of a certain kind. At the same time, the scenes that Dekel creates in his works evoke the imagination, while connecting to mythological scenes from the past or the future, thoughts about mental states and political, mystical, environmental and other contexts.

Artist website

Works

Rest Area

Garbage cans, Fire extinguishing system, burned metal, 2018

As part of the exhibition in Bat Yam Museum.

In this space we encounter two orders, two entities: the garbage and the extinguishing. These are two symbolic structures with representations in the Israeli landscape. On one side, the burnt industrial dustbin stands erected, a sign of unrestrained passion, an attempt to revolt that was suppressed and extinguished, waiting for the right time to erupt again. On the other, a sophisticated fire-fighting system, experienced in disasters which will maintain the existing order at any price.

The gallery space demonstrates constant anxiety from change, but also a golden opportunity for trust-building processes between the two.

Ararat

Garbage Container, 6" Sewer Pipe, Curbstone, Tar, 2020

“Hakhava” Gallery, Holon

Hothouse

Electric Boilers, Sattelite Dishes, Eucalyptus Oil, 2016

In this installation Tomer chose to confront two neighbors who share a common living space – the municipal roof. The boiler contains internal primordial forces. The satellite dish is associated with communication with the outside world, the ability to receive and emit messages. In the gallery space he built a new living environment for the two, they are lowered from the roof to the underground which allows them to express other qualities.

End of Year Exhibition

Helium balloons 16”, 2 air condition’s motors, white oleanders, camouflage net, blue color, 2014

In the eastern part of the space, two air-conditioning engines are growling, pushing the helium balloons into a row of white oleanders stuck in the drain. Every so often, thanks to the wind regime, a certain balloon rises until it reaches one of the two western windows located in the space. Windows which are converted, with the help of an IDF camouflage net, into protected pockets. After a while the balloon returned to the line.

Sketch for a Haifaian hall

Private Cars, Tar, 2019

This hall introduces an ‘intended accident’. The incongruency between the uncontrolled and unintended state of an accident, and the controlled, proportional installation of the vehicles in the hall, introduce an unresolved tension. The cars resemble Cherubim in the Temple; The running tar is an emblem, a raw matter of being and metamorphosis; The car seats, tires and engine parts all partake at this perpetual sacred work.