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Ashdod's newest shopping precinct, with its crenellated roof, multiple domes and simulated marble walls in various pastel shades, closely resembles a Moorish citadel, at least from the outside. It is the latest and most extreme example of a local design vogue which appropriates architectural styles and ornament from abroad in order to satisfy every taste.
A photograph of this extraordinary building has been pinned to the wall of the Tel Aviv gallery where Yehudit Sasportas (b. Ashdod, 1969), Israel,s representative at this year,s Art Biennale in Istanbul, has mounted a new installation.
Skillfully designed and assembled, Sasportas's work takes the form of an architectural floor model cut from plywood and painted in the garish colors identical to those used on the facade of the Ashdod shopping mall. This model is not of a city or building project. It is composed of scores of kitchen units - tables, cupboards, ovens, walls - which have been replicated in different sizes and are either connected by corridors or segregated by thin wooden partitions.
Central to this configuration is a "nerve center," comprising a trio of narrow kitchen spaces arranged in a circle. Radiating out from it are two huge "arms" resembling the lanes of a bowling alley. One of these lanes, which has kitchen plates fitted into it, terminates in a tiered construction representing a giant dishwasher.
Although Sasportas's kitchen city has no moving parts, it gives the impression of being a working mechanism, or even a living organism, which has literally been stopped in its tracks. Bearing in mind that Sasportas is working with metaphors, this writer is still unsure what this dysfunction, or halt in production, is meant to signify. Perhaps Sasportas is suggesting that her city of kitchens cannot function because it is composed of too many incompatible components (people? architectural units?). In any case, this question is just one of several which remain unanswered in this visually appealing but puzzling installation.
"PVC," the title given to this installation, offers a clue to another topic which Sasportas apparently wants to include in this heavily veiled discourse on contemporary architecture and design. Since nothing in this installation is made from plastics, the choice of title appears to be a comment on the casual and frequent use...