Israeli pavilion Biennale of art in Venice

The Israeli pavilion in the 1995 Venice Biennale was entitled The Book. The artists, Joshua Neustein and Uri Tzaig, the curator Gideon Ofrat, and the writer David Grossman, wanted to present in this Ya’akov Rechter-designed pavilion the essence and spirit of the words and texts of Hebrew tradition. There was a reproduction of manuscripts, archives, microfilms, catalogs, 30 lithographs, and the work of individual artists all centered on written and verbal language.

Joshua Neustein worked on the soul of the library: in the interior installation of the pavilion language was dissolved, continually accompanied by the music of Tosca; on the external façade a scaffold covered by fiberglass panels permitted a view of the texts chosen by the artist. Every day, David Grossman sent 20 stories from Jerusalem: Every Man is a Story. They all began in the same way: “One of the thousands now strolling around Venice is not a flesh and blood human being, but a fictional character…”

We were involved, above all, with the external installations of the polycarbonate structure; this covered the pavilion’s external garden to create a temporary white space between heaven and earth. This was a bright and translucent background for Uri Tzaig’s texts and photos. A transparent house surrounding the trees: a childhood dream.