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Golem

Noa Geras and González Sosto/León's Golem interprets the themes that have determined the discourse of humanity over the past two years: isolation, fear, and death. Noa Geras is focused on isolation and its consequences. Turning to her inner self, she explores the methods of automatic drawing as a possible getaway from the shackles of fear and the inability of direct contact with others. Inspired by Japanese calligraphy, she connects the resulting drawings into a diary of a period of life. The transformative aspect of sadness and the awareness of the passage of time are central to the work of Armando González Sosto. Following the tragic death of their friend, González Sosto and Andrés León created an audiovisual installation in which they study the flow of time and the marks an individual leaves behind during their life.

Noa Geras (Jerusalem, 1996) graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design (Graphic arts) in Zagreb in 2014, after which she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb (Department of Animated Film and New Media). In 2015/2016 she attended the study of Painting and Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. Since 2016, she has been studying Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, where she graduated in 2019 in the class of prof. Petar Barišić. She is currently attending her postgraduate in Computational Arts, at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2016, she has participated in art colonies and group exhibitions, and exhibited independently in Zagreb (2019) and Split (2020). She won the First Prize at the 20th International Exhibition of Miniatures in Zaprešić (2017), the Rector's Prize (2017/18) and the ALU Academic Council Award to the most successful graduates (2018/2019). Her wooden sculptures Aurox (2017) and Nest (2019) are placed as public sculptures within the art colony Light lines in Bjelovar. In the Antun Augustinčić Gallery and the Galić Salon, she exhibited a sculpture ensemble called Go West, which interprets her philosophical and sociological reflections.

About

Art has always served as a medium of communication – particularly of topics which are difficult to express in words or that are entangled into deep philosophical thoughts. It transcends the boundaries of language and through its forms beckons, interweaves and raises awareness. Noa Geras and Armando Gonzalez Sosto’s/Andres Leon’s “Golem” interprets the themes that have determined the discourse of humanity over the past two years: isolation, fear, and death. The first thought of the word golem is mostly associated with an amorphous monster of anthropogenic features made of awoken mud or clay. Depending on source material, the Golem is either the protector of the people, the submissive servant of the master who revived him, or a creature of a destructive nature. However, as etymology indicates, the Golem is nothing more than a chrysalis which protects the delicate body of the larva before it transforms into a butterfly. Therefore, it embodies the powerful dichotomy of life and death as the current reality of all humanity. The fear of the death-bringing virus commanded a transformation of everyday life. The imposed isolation as a method of suppressing the spread of the virus, dictated a turn inwards, to one’s own thoughts and themselves, slowing down the cacophony of the world. It made us ponder solidarity, health (both physical and mental), time we have, time we spend and time which inevitably leads to our end - death. Breaking the stereotype of passive observation of an artwork, artists demand active engagement from the audience either by directly influencing the development of Gonzalez Sosto’s/Leon’s work or by emotionally engaging in the work of Noa Geras.

Noa Geras focused on isolation and its consequences. Turning to her inner self, she explores the methods of automatic drawing as a possible getaway from the shackles of fear and the inability of direct contact with others. Automatic drawing corresponds directly to the need to convey the artist's inner world: the focus is not on the form, lines, figuration, symbolism, but on meaning which cannot truly be verbalized, which creates an atmosphere and conveys emotion that the viewer intuitively recognizes and responds to. The black line drawings are naturally derived from her previous study of Japanese sumi calligraphy. Although calligraphy is based on the belief that the act of creating art is immediate and spontaneous, it is closely related to deep philosophical reflection, meditation and discipline. Equally, calligraphy is a part of Japanese Zen which, according to Taoist theory, places intuitive cognition at the centre of understanding the phenomenological world. Creating at the time of complete lockdown, she connects and transforms the resulting automatic drawings into a diary of a period of life.

The transformative aspect of sadness and the awareness of the passage of time are central to the work of Armando Gonzalez Sosto and Andres Leon. Following the tragic death of their friend, Gonzalez Sosto in collaboration with Andres Leon created an audio-visual installation in which they studied the flow of time and the marks an individual leaves behind during their life. Via simple visualizations with a repetitive musical sequence a meditative atmosphere that calls for contemplation is created. Using the website as the primary form of expression, a series of time-related images are generated, causing the audience to influence the page each time it is opened. This breaks down the fourth wall and allows for direct audience participation. Since it is a procedural work, it will continue to grow and develop for as long as the site is active. It is in this way that Gonzalez Sosto/Leon bring to light the apparent cyclicity of individual’s time and conceptualize the merging of an end into a new beginning. They emphasize the relativity and paradoxical understanding of time, contextually tied to the transience of life, which depends on culture and the way that time is integrated into social structures. Thus, death ceases to be an opposition to life or even a final end, but is only one line in a continuous series of time. Like the Golem, this exhibition embodies not only fear and destruction, but a particular glimmer of hope that every transformation brings as well.