The fake, the future and the finite (A Commemoration of the Absolute in the 21st Century) Part 1: Sun, Rainbow, Arch Installation, wood, paint, collage, drawings and prints 2007 Alon Levin makes drawings, charts, collages, wooden objects and other work that he often incorporates in larger installations. In his work he looks at structures and systems we often take for granted, those that are informed by philosophical, economical and social theories. Moreover, his work seems to advocate a shift in models of knowledge from a reductionist to a relational approach. The work for this exhibition is the first of a series of five that pays tribute to Man´s ongoing attempts to provide meaning to things, and the symbols and metaphors that are being used to represent these meanings. The ‘Absolute’ in the title of the work refers to that which can only exist in a confined, created, space - in this case presumably the exhibition space, to be understood as a physical situation, a framing of a kind, and as a set of rules. The ‘Absolute’ is also referred to in the resemblance of the work´s elements to Modernist forms that "seem to suggest a certain truth,” as Levin puts it himself. Yet, as with all his work, the installation is as much about taking apart and reconstructing truth, or knowledge as something essentially relational. This happens by the inversion, the reversal, as well as the opposition of physical structures and logic: The rainbow with its biblical and mythological connotations materialized as arch – a structure which eliminates tensile stresses in spanning an open space – in its inverted version needs reinforcement. The drawings and collages in a small room that leads up to the larger part of his installation add to this same principle of inversion. They bring together three fundamental elements –Sun, Rainbow, Arch– and with these construct new limited narratives. These variations become a document of understanding as a process in time. They are another expression of Levin´s interest in “given constructions of our reality, and our constant battle with our limited understanding. ” Hilde de Bruijn SMART Project Space

The fake, the future and the finite
(A Commemoration of the Absolute in the 21st Century)
Part 1: Sun, Rainbow, Arch
Installation, wood, paint, collage, drawings and prints
2007

Alon Levin makes drawings, charts, collages, wooden objects and other work that he often incorporates in larger
installations. In his work he looks at structures and systems we often take for granted, those that are informed by
philosophical, economical and social theories. Moreover, his work seems to advocate a shift in models of knowledge
from a reductionist to a relational approach.

The work for this exhibition is the first of a series of five that pays tribute to Man´s ongoing attempts to provide
meaning to things, and the symbols and metaphors that are being used to represent these meanings. The ‘Absolute’
in the title of the work refers to that which can only exist in a confined, created, space - in this case presumably the
exhibition space, to be understood as a physical situation, a framing of a kind, and as a set of rules. The ‘Absolute’
is also referred to in the resemblance of the work´s elements to Modernist forms that "seem to suggest a certain truth,”
as Levin puts it himself. Yet, as with all his work, the installation is as much about taking apart and reconstructing truth,
or knowledge as something essentially relational. This happens by the inversion, the reversal, as well as the opposition
of physical structures and logic: The rainbow with its biblical and mythological connotations materialized as arch –
a structure which eliminates tensile stresses in spanning an open space – in its inverted version needs reinforcement.
The drawings and collages in a small room that leads up to the larger part of his installation add to this same principle
of inversion. They bring together three fundamental elements –Sun, Rainbow, Arch– and with these construct new limited
narratives. These variations become a document of understanding as a process in time. They are another expression of
Levin´s interest in “given constructions of our reality, and our constant battle with our limited understanding. ”

Hilde de Bruijn
SMART Project Space