In his 1819 Treatise on the Kaleidoscope, its inventor, Sir David Brewster, noted that although the instrument he devised was “capable of creating beautiful forms from the most ugly and shapeless objects,” the visual “combinations which it presents, when obtained from certain forms and colors, are so superior to those which it produces from others, that no idea can be formed of the power and effects of the instrument, unless the objects are judiciously selected.”

Shai-Lee Horodi chooses the minimal object for the viewer—the one used for seeing itself: the eye. Through an interplay of light and lenses, the pupil is revealed—the very medium by which we see becomes the object of observation. If the other’s gaze is what determines our place in the world, what will happen when we look into our own gaze? If our distance from the other is eliminated when there is a gaze between us, what will happen when our distance from ourselves is eliminated?

Horodi’s optical toys are made up of the simplest of means; such are also the means used in her video work—a flashlight and several lenses. Her fascination is childlike. The powerful impression made by the rich forms and combinations is intensified in inverse proportion to the frugality of means. “Look!” she cries over and over again, like a child who is too small to contain the wonder, seeking the assistance of additional eyes.

We are used to looking at the world and knowing what is going to happen in it. Our gaze is smart and tired. An object, if thrown in our direction, will surprise us only if it remains suspended in the air. But Horodi looks at the world from a different angle—that of the child, who will be amazed that the object falls to the floor; who will be excited by the very existence of systematic laws in the universe; who enjoys rediscovering where the rays of light are refracted, what our eye is looking at, and who is looking at it.

Urban legend has it that when the Golden Gate Bridge was built in San Francisco, the local Mafia used the soft concrete at its base as a convenient place in which to dump corpses. What was supposed to be a strong concrete mass became akin to Swiss cheese, full of holes; empty tombs; yet another creative way in which we try to get rid of our dead.

Man has always buried his dead. Whether in tombs intended to preserve and care for their bodies, or those intended to keep the dead away from us so that we, the living, are not harmed by them—the human inclination has always been to wrap and keep away, to cover and seal.

In her new sculptures Shahar Yahalom wraps and covers sculptures made by others, creating hollow tombs for objects no longer there; sculptures of animals—a barn owl, a raven, and a gazelle—which have left behind only a faint echo; pairs of feet fixed to the floor and buried under a mass of material. She continually probes the balance of power and the ability of an inanimate object to represent a dead body.

The tomb is a protective armor. Wrapping and covering can also be a comfort—we swaddle newborns to give them a sense of protection; we tie people who suffer from sensory hypersensitivity and emotional difficulties in straitjackets to soothe them; we place a heavy blanket on them to give them a sense of a warm hug and improve their sleep.

Like houses covered in snow, or trees wrapped in sacks to protect them from the frost, the ceramic objects in the exhibition remain a rounded abstract image of the object buried beneath them. We only get the cover, only the contours after they have been emptied of the object that sketched them, and have been left hollow.

A monumental landscape image is screened in a large, dark space. Figures emerge between the weeping willows and the desert sands, between the field vegetation and the building walls. In fact, the training range at the IDF Shivta camp is reminiscent of a museum exhibition space or a state-of-the-art movie theater. The training soldiers lie on the ground opposite the screen and have to identify, just like in a movie, who are the good guys and who are the bad; who should be shot and who should continue leading the herd to pasture.

Amir Yatziv looks at the training simulation as if it were a pastoral scene. The leaves sway in the wind, rain begins to fall. He observes the “extras” present throughout the film. These are the least important, least invested figures. In the gaming world from which these animations are derived, they are called Non Player Characters (NPCs), those characters who are not given a lead role, waiting for the movie to unfold, for their turn to come. Their mode of action is planned in advance. Their sole purpose is to create an atmosphere, without influencing the events.

The animation invested in these figures is equally poor. Their movements are basic and repetitious—raising their hand to check their watch, swinging a leg, twisting the neck in a circular motion, over and over again. Not much time has been invested in building additional movements for these figures, but time is actually all they have at their disposal. Like the rest of us, they are waiting for something to happen.

Roy Cohen deconstructs the withheld violence in Israeli society. At times he distills it into a text, sung by football fans on the pitches; elsewhere he sees the violent provocation in an innocent-looking metal barricade. While in previous works he delved into the symbolism innate to domestic objects, such as a backgammon board, teacups, or a can of oil, in “Nonfinito” he examines government authorized violence, attempting to disarm it. The metal structures, which normally block and stop movement, are transformed in his work into soft, flexible rubber; rigidity is replaced by elasticity, the stiff posture by dance movements.

Cohen’s barriers can block no one. The molds he creates in his home shelter reveal their soft spots to him, the roadblock’s Achilles heel. The connections between the frame and the bars are the weakest link, the easiest to break. These are the metal legs disengaging opposite the angry crowd; the rubber feet falling off in view of the everyday. Gravity is quite enough here; there is no need to apply additional force against them.

Originally, the barriers were intended to keep you safe and keep others safe from you at the same time, depending on which side of them you are. They are situated in front of the stage during concerts in the park, outline the direction of a demonstration, stop the crowd at a sports field, or protect a newly erected statue. Trampling these barriers is like trampling world order—whether old or new, ours or that of others. Instead of representing order, however, they represent the law, and instead of showing us the way, they signal where not to go. The barriers have tired of performing a role not their own; perhaps it is time to find someone or something better suited to do that.

The air around Karam Natour is thick. A host of entities sit on his shoulder, choosing the moment they wish to enter the works. His shadow bustles constantly beneath him, and he is surrounded by ghosts past and present alongside historical concepts, which seek presence. At times they grow longer, penetrating the drawings, at other times they shrink and try to push Natour upward, so he may float a little in the air. Millennia of ideas, questions, and identities crowd over him, and Natour walks in their midst, almost floating, translating the dizziness around him into works of art.

At the turn of the 20th century, scientists studied the phenomenon of ectoplasm—a ritual performed by mediums in a state of trance, intended to embody the immaterial in matter; to embody the spirits revolving around us using cloth. The orifices in the medium’s body—mouth, nose, and ears—secrete a gauze-like substance, enveloping the incorporeal body and rendering it present in the room. Doctors and researchers claim that ectoplasm is not real, but artists know better.

Natour’s works, too, embody the immaterial in matter, although even their materiality is deceptive. His drawings are all computer-generated; the photographs and video works are digital beats—entire exhibitions which are a sequence of binary codes; specters that previously spun around his head, with or without a cloth to cover them, and are now circling there as digital files on their way to the printer and TV screen, so it may breathe substance and life into them, at least as long as we continue to believe they exist.

Tchelet Ram’s objects ghost her. They stop responding and do not get back to her. She calls out to them, but they are no longer there. All that is left of them is the shape of the structure, the shell of the white sheet, the memory of the object. Ram uses old white bedsheets, ones that show the signs of time and body, to sew slipcovers for furniture items that have lost their use: a chest of drawers built around a bathroom sink; a wardrobe that became part of a work of art, resumed its function as a wardrobe, and has recently changed its function again and found its place in the collection of Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Memory can be regarded as fantasy in reverse. It changes and is reshaped according to latent desires and passions, as a result of accumulated life experience. The contours of the furniture arise from the “ghosts” in the space, but they are abstract and soft, whitened and full of air. Placed inside them are found objects: a ceramic object created by artist Shahar Yahalom—possibly a knife, possibly a bone, and paper towels that are being extracted from the sheets. These objects, likewise white but of different materiality, are physically bound yet out of context. They function as an external factor reminding us of what we have long forgotten.

Ram chose to install her work in the back space of the gallery, which serves as a warehouse and garbage room, covered with ceramic tiles along the floor and walls. The square grid in the background of the flexible fabric works simulates a virtual space where the spatial and the temporal can coexist, and the elusiveness of memory is perceived as an actual reality.