ori gersht - exploding the present moment

today i’d like to share the work of israeli-born artist ori gersht. gersht’s work has undergone several transformations through the course of his career with this latest being in my own view the most successful from the perspective of challenging the perceptions of his audience.

in his latest series of photographs, entitled “time after time”, gersht has depicted flower arrangements (based upon dutch still life paintings) in the process of exploding.

at first the images are disquieting as there’s a disagreeable quality inherent with the destruction of anything beautiful. but stepping back from the relationship you have with your memories of flowers and appreciating both the technical and aesthetic qualities of these photographs affords you the opportunity to connect with the component parts of the images.

the colours of the flowers as they explode are muted due to gersht having frozen them prior to being photographed with liquid nitrogen.

as you view this frozen yet visually dynamic event, the artificiality of the beautiful formal flower arrangements is quickly deconstructed and then reconstructed into a thing of fragmented beauty. yet, despite the apparent violence of the explosion there is a sort of tranquil feeling to the images. time stops. this is one of the beauties of art, that it can find a moment, amplify it and through this process, allow for a heightened awareness of the flow of objects, space, and time.

as gersht states in an interview, these photographs capture ““that moment of suspension, when everything is about to disintegrate, about to fly apart, but is still together. It’s the ultimate present.”