INSIDE: Raleigh on Film; Bethune on Theatre; Seckel's "Cultural Scene; Steiner on "Images, Sounds, Words"; Lille on Michel Platnic; Platnic on Movement; Rena Tobey on Lilly Martin Spencer; Herman on The Soundtrack of My Life; New Art Books; Short Fiction & Poetry; Extensive Calendar of Cultural Events…and more!
Vol. 31
No. 2
Fall 2014
(Sept/Oct/Nov)
Michel Platnic: Let us Move Through Space
By Dawn Lille Usually I enter a gallery, walk through the first part of an exhibition to get a general impression, then go back and look at each work separately. When a friend took me to the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv to see the work of an emerging talent I continued this habit. But after a minute or two I realized something unusual was happening. Enter the world of Michel Platnic, a French born artist who moved to Israel in 1998, graduated with
honors from the Midrasha School of Art and received a prize for Excellence in Photography. Prior to this, due to his degree in electrical engineering, he had worked in the telecom field. But he also studied and practiced martial arts, performance art and the mime techniques of Etienne Decroix and Jacques Lecoq. He admired the theater of Ariane Mnouchkine and read extensively. Platnic mixes painting, camera and video, via extensive use of the human body, to create “living paintings,” which, because of his attention to minute detail, allow the viewer to become part of an illusionary and interdisciplinary world. For several years he has been making works “after” Francis Bacon. He uses models, often himself, to meticulously recreate or restage the scene of a Bacon painting. This is not really “appropriation” as the term is currently used; it could almost be called “homage and development.” Platnic does not attempt to duplicate or reconstruct the After Triptych 1983 (1 picture of a series of 3 pictures) work, but, rather, photo by Carolina Bonfil
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uses it as a starting point. The first impression, that we are seeing some version of the original painting, is quickly dissipated and it becomes something else. If one were working only in dance it might be akin to using the famous Romantic print of the four ballerinas as the basis for a choreographic work (which has, in fact, been done). Each finished work is that of a team, which can consist of a model who has been carefully dressed and painted by makeup and costume designers, plus contribuAfter Study for the Human Body tions by video and (photo by Matan Ashkenazy) still photographers, a lighting designer and those who head, he constantly directs and reassist in the building and painting directs the viewer’s gaze. Seen in the of the sets. Platnic conceives of, di- very beginning of the exhibit, it was, rects and is the artist who paints the in its sustainment, a sudden and body for each piece, which begins as almost frightening phenomenon. In his painting Triptych, 1983, a photograph. Bacon portrays the torment of Bacon portrays three male figures, his objects via distortion. Platnic partially nude bodies clothed in brings them to life and gives them briefs, with faces masked by blocks the possibility of breaking out of the of color, plus their shadows. The two frame, of making a choice, of being on either side are seated and the central figure is standing with his more positive. In After Three Studies for a Por- back to the viewer. The three videos trait of Lucian Freud, 1965 Plat- imbedded in Platnic’s version are nic models the three faces on three not synchronized. Thus to watch the screens. By the slow blinking of an Continued on Page 3 eyelid or subtle inclination of the
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