To lay open / Uri Tuchman
Exhibition text written by: Tal Gilad
Armatura Gallery 276 Fifth Ave, 7th floor
New York, New York, 10001
United States
May 25 - June 22 2016
Uri Tuchman is an artist who often chooses to roleplay as an entrepreneur. A unifying front for Uri’s conceptual-concept art is the Tuchman megacorporation. This fictional company includes three branches: “Tuchman Airlines”, “Tuchman Space Program”, and the most recent “Tuchman Industries”. The Tuchman brand is all about portraying the preposterous with style, keeping a strong tension between Decadence and Steampunk. The shell corporation industrial trade mark is a street pigeon. The company's core values include a religious-like worship to the mere idea of a piece of toast. His drawings aspire to be “patent illustrations” technical dry, self explanatory, sketches that look as if they were taken straight from a mid century dictionary. This appearance is as much an effort to make a fantastic idea “real” as it is a tool for making the technical, sensual. With a simple ballpoint pen, forgotten and dated inventions are synergised with slick cutting edge technology.
In “Toast Maker” a rather sophisticated toaster-head like robot reaches out and touches a simple technology “pop-up” toaster seated on a custom height made pedestal/table. Perhaps in order to celebrate a simple moment of slightly burning a piece of bread. This is Uri’s take on The Creation of Adam.
In “Koshering Meat, in continuation with a series titled “Jewdi” which includes the work “Yadsaber”, comes together a pair of “lightsabers” detailed with exquisite judaica ornaments sided with a full “Jamón Ibérico” (dry-cured ham from Spain) that is traditionally sliced very thinly. Therefore, it is traditionally cut with a long and super-sharp knife. This juxtaposition creates the most trivial religious paradox around the Jewish faith restrictions on the consumption of pork.
“Paraplegic robot” is basically a limping robot as if a robot could have suffered a spinal cord injury needing a cane. The apparatus inspecting a world of medical robotics subtracting the man. Deliberty creating flawed crippled yet self sufficient being. Probably the only gadget that can perfectly display a graceful walk of an elderly gentleman.
“Crusader Toaster” - An intellectual gag about nostalgia items that combine the old with the new.
Hybrid of a helmet of the High Middle Ages which arose in the late 12th century in the context of the Crusades with a modern dual-sided toasting and automated pop-up technology.
These kind of clashing worlds meet in Uri’s mind, god and breakfast, war and toast, man and machine. Inventions are “clock radio” type of machines only they combine contrasting functions in one appliance:
“Anaesthesia coffee maker” numb sensation in certain areas of the body or induce sleep while also making a dosage of the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug, an Italian coffee drink that is traditionally prepared with espresso, hot milk and steamed milk foam.
“Pendulum Cardiac Pacemaker” treats arrhythmias and also functions as an office table accessory.
“Pistol Defibrillator“ suggest a common treatment for life-threatening situations for a “dying” revolver.
and “Stomach Acid Electric Igniter” takes one's gastric juice to produce a flame to light up a virginia blend cigarette or cook a steak.
These make-belief products take the “Just another day in the office” attitude to the extreme.
Confronting life(style) and death through metaphysical consumerism of 'reflective nostalgia'.
Uri Tuchman (B.1987, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin.
Education
2010-2011 Exchange Program, Slade School of Fine Art, London.
2008-2012 B.F.A Fine Art Department, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem.
Contact: Uri Tuchman / uritu44@gmail.com