Maya Gelfman
ART Habens
I ' m attracted to art because it ' s a two-way mirror, allowing parallel realities to not just co-exist but to enhance one another. Art can and should provide a place of transcendence, beauty, tenderness and even comfort while simultaneously evoking soulsearching, gut-wrenching feelings. When I was four years old, I had a near death experience while having an open heart surgery. That threshold rendezvous left me convinced that opposites are bound together. In my works I strive to encompass and echo this duality. They stem from that simultaneous sense of vertigo and stability. The diffusive exchange that transpires between the inner and outer worlds is at the heart of my workstation installation. The red yarn, egg-like coils are nesting at the foot of a table( it ' s my actual studio work-table). They symbolize subconscious potential and a source of conception. A single umbilical cord connects them to the workstation, where they are materialized into external forms. In The machine installation, the cord( a single, continuous thread) passes through an assembly of wheels, cogs and metal gears. This time it can be read as the transition of the human factor through the mechanisms of a system. The apparatus represent functions of a body, and so the ' thread of life ' is the blood line that drives and revives the machine. It may seem as if the harsh metallic inand-outs might tear it apart, but as the red thread runs full course it marks the passage of time and distance. When it comes out the other side intact, it manifests endurance and becomes a whole heart. Still, I deem that the details in themselves are almost meaningless. My work doesn ' t revolve around my personal story but rather uses it as a trigger and a catalyst to create objects and
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