Tel Aviv Artists Association Gallery 2017

Curator:  Yif'at Sarah Pearl

 

The term "Multiaccentuality" has first appeared in Valentin Voloshinov's cogitation in 1973, in which he points out a phenomenon where a  certain sign may carry varied and different meanings among different classes.

The articles collection, which comes along with the exhibition, includes five different articles which express different philosophical thoughts and contemplations, new ideas and knowledge constructing moves which were extracted by the artist from a set of symbols and signs in his works.  

The different combinations in the works express the minimalistic code of the symmetric, the geometric, the elegant and the formal. These immediately create hidden and implied compositions of contrasts, irregularities, asymmetry, vacancy and shape, which stimulate the mind and bring up questions considering the way new knowledge is built. For instance, in what sort of environment is knowledge constructed? How do the investigation and processing of new knowledge develop? Or, how can a continuation of investigation and processing be created in different ways?

In his articles, Fishbein creates an illusion of a scientific laboratorial reality – biological, mathematical, physical, psychoanalytical – that expands the boundaries of thinking and creates 'crossroads' between the symbols that give room to new thinking directions while constructing knowledge. The exhibition is asking to evoke curiosity among its audience by offering a new observation of Fishbein's visual set of symbols; whereas these construct new meanings and raise the question of how new ideas are created.

A reorganization of a given set of symbols is an editing process of new knowledge. Constructing and developing new ideas into knowledge by using natural selection, can work on different levels, such as the artist's creativity, the actions he takes to check them, the groups in which these ideas and their applications are presented, and society as a whole. Hence, we should think of the way in which symbols join in and create decreasing hierarchal structures, vertical and horizontal. In addition, we may also think about the way in which the combination of symbols can shift from place to place, reorganize knowledge and express new meaning limitlessly. The existence of  a system of reciprocal relations between the different imageries and the observer shall bring to the guidance, constructing and the planning of  a new kind of knowledge.

These relations answer the questions of how, why and when does the transition of information occur, and also examine the way in which this information has been formed and created. By that, Fishbein begins a process of constructing knowledge through different symbols' systems and imageries from the world of science, partly organized in a changeable modular manner and partly constructed in a holistic one, which demands the destruction of what already exists.

The process of creating the different imageries in the work that describes a chess set with its knights, evoked Fishbein into a cognitive process which has lead to a development of philosophical and metaphysical contemplations that appear in his article "Knight's Move". Questions such as what is the meaning of the knight, why does the knight always skip the first checker, and what is the symbolic meaning of this checker at all?. The relations between the different symbols create knowledge which is diverted and directed to the possibilities of creating new infinite knowledge about the function and the activity of the knight. An identical process takes place in a series of works which are based on Fishbein's childhood memories in the shape of latent information. These works vaguely represent a segment of Fishbein's grandfather's dramatic life story, which starts by the Baltic Sea and ends up by the Mediterranean. The artist re-edits the story line of that segment and rises up the questions of "what if there were a possibility to choose a different way of life?", "what is the essence of a way that turned into an existential state?". Based on his emotions and senses, the artist creates a set of symbols and textual structures that destabilize the essence of the remembering mechanism, and allow a construction of an imaginary, collective reality, that appears in his article "PNR- Point of No Recall".

In other articles, the construction of knowledge is done by direct planning. In his article "LVA- Lunar Visualization Algebra", Fishbein offers new parameters to the likelihood of moon phases, unlike the moon phases imageries that appear on the calendar. In the article "Moon Phase – Wolf Unit", the moon phases are presented on the inner faces of a black box, which is different from the original and the familiar presentation way of moon phases charts, which embody the order in the Hebrew and the Muslim calendars.  By that, Fishbein opens new possibilities of examining moon phases without limiting them by physical principles and cultural norms of any kind.

A different set of symbols was born when the artist became aware of the fact that an octopus has three functioning hearts. Inspired by this information (video work, 2017), fishbein has started a process of knowledge construction in a symbolic and a fictional way, which addresses the future in order to evoke thoughts and new ideas of the human heart structure. In a set of imageries, he presents options in which the heart is divided to five hearts, and asks subversive questions in his article "Cardio Mitosis", as an example of contemplating the existence of governmental policy that hides such phenomena from the eye of the public. The hiding of information causes a developmental change in the beginning of the new knowledge construction process, and by that slows down the process of expanding the limits of knowledge and its progression.

Fishbein's previous works have been presented in several solo and group exhibitions, sometimes in a subversive, critical context toward social and cultural norms. The challenge in the exhibition "Multiaccentuality", was to organize the old and the recent works as mutual conventions, neutralized of critical social aspects, so they will be changeable and translated into new different conventions and new knowledge.