Absalon Art — Officiel Website of the Israeli-French artist Absalon (1964

This site is in the process of construction

May 2022

This site is in the process of construction and is therefore still exposed to technical difficulties, errors and the need for proofreading. Vigorous actions are also being taken to locate the copyright holders, regarding some of the photographs that appear on the website.

ABSALON SQUARE WAS INAUGURATED IN THE NAME OF THE ARTIST IN ASHDOD

March 2022

Absalon Square was inaugurated at the intersection of Rogozin and Moshe Dayan streets in Ashdod on Wednesday, March 2, 22, at 10:00, in the presence of the Mayor of Ashdod - Dr. Yehiel Lasri, the parents of Avshalom-Elie and Adele Eshel and guests.

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VITAL SIGNS

February 2023 – June 2023
Pulse & Breathing Rhythm in Contemporary Art

Participating artists: Absalon, Sharon Azagi, Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Miriam Cabessa, Lilach Chitayat, Sophie Dupont, Regina José Galindo, Gideon Gechtman, Douglas Gordon, Inbal Hoffman, Dikla Moskovich, Avi Sabah, Alma Shneor, Dor Zlekha Levy

Our lives depend on the flow of air and blood. Every movement and sensation are activated by an internal rhythm of air that is drawn into the lungs and then exhaled, and of blood that flows from the heart and ultimately back. The body operates like a well-designed machine, whose complex systems are hidden from view under the skin. The exhibition presents works in which the hidden rhythm of breathing and the pulse is given a visual and vocal expression; works that penetrate the depths of the body and expose the invisible. The internal mechanism that sets the body in motion opens onto the surface, and the boundaries between interior and exterior blur.

The pulse and breathing rates are among the vital signs by which physicians determine whether a person is healthy, sick, or dead. The vital signs are directly affected by one's emotional state: they change in moments of calm or excitement, fear or infatuation. The exhibition features some of the real products of these vital signs in works of art from the past twenty years. Lines, lights, and sounds are generated as the work of art is adapted to the heartbeats and the cycle of inhalation-exhalation, which determine the structure of the work. This rhythm—whether calm and regular, fast and fidgety, or completely still—may guide one into the depths of consciousness. Alternatively, it can make us conscious of those who are bleeding or those who have been deprived of air to breathe.

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THE SEVEN YEARS OF ABSALON

May 2022
Documentary film: Israel 2022, 60 min, Hebrew, English and French, Hebrew & English subtitles

Meir Eshel, a 22-year-old beach-boy from Southern Israel, buys a one-way ticket to Paris and re-invents himself as an artist calling himself Absalon. He quickly rises to art-scene stardom, showcased by the most prestigious museums worldwide: the Venice Bienalle, Centre Pompidou Paris, Tate Modern Gallery London, Israel Museum.
Absalon’s success was short-lived – almost 7 years pass since his arrival in Paris until his tragic death, during the peak of his success at the age of 28.
More than 25 years later, his younger brother Dani Eshel’s first assignment as estate manager – is to sell Absalon’s final art piece.
Through his journey we learn about the life of a unique Israeli artist.

Created by & Script: David Ofek, Amit Azaz
Production: David Noy, Yoram Ivry
Production Company: Cinemax Productions Ltd.
Editing: Yarden Kum
Cinematography: Yoram Ivry
Research: Amit Azaz, Sharon Hammou
Sound Design: Rotem Dror
Music: Asaf Talmudi, Yuval Goldenberg, Didi Erez

Source: Cinemax Productions Ltd

Supporters & Broadcasters: Yes Docu, Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, Mifal HaPayis

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ABSALON ABSALON

June 2021
Exhbition at CAPC, Bordeaux, France

With: Absalon, Alain Buffard, Dora García, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Mona Hatoum, Laura Lamiel, Myriam Mihindou

The group exhibition Absalon Absalon takes the prematurely interrupted work of the Franco-Israeli artist Absalon as its starting point and proposes new interpretations via a selection of works by other artists of his generation and a network of conceptual and formal affinities. Best known for his Cellules (Cells) – geometric, architectural constructions painted in immaculate white which the artist conceived and constructed to live in – Absalon’s practice has often been considered part of a genealogy of avantgardes, a continuation of abstract radicalism, both generic and idealised, disconnected from worldly contingencies. Without wanting to overlook the harmony between Absalon’s work and a certain historic teleology, this exhibition interrogates intent and meaning by proposing a more subjective, political and embodied approach.

From a large selection of his drawings, models, sculptures, maps and built-to-scale prototypes, we attempt to show how Absalon’s work – whose linear trajectory ought to have led to a life-long project that would have surpassed the field of art – can be articulated around unique new ways of thinking. In retrospect, beneath the surface-level minimalism of his works, Absalon penetrated a multitude of social, affective and psychological questions all of which concern the emancipation of a physical body from a political body. His Cellules are less claustrophobic or deductive than they are built-to-scale mental and physical spaces: both protected and connected. They may almost be seen as bio-parasitical devices that function as a place for living and care in an environment considered by the artist as the sum of various agendas and determinants set by a culture his work would allow him to liberate himself from. They may almost be seen as bio-parasitical devices that function as a place for living and care in an environment considered by the artist as the sum of various agendas and determinants set by a culture his work would allow him to liberate himself from.

As a way of providing comparisons with this concrete utopia, and as part of a logic which is less dialectical than it is an opening of possibilities, we have chosen works by eight artists (Alain Buffard, Dora García, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Mona Hatoum, Laura Lamiel, Myriam Mihindou) that we believe will generate multiple perspectives. Dissimulated amongst Absalon’s œuvre, these works should be viewed as couriers that allow for the transmission of cultural, spiritual, identarian, poetic and sentimental questions that go beyond Absalon’s primary monolithic and often impenetrable approach. This programme places Absalon’s searing career retrospectively: not within the hypothetical spirit of his time – the 1990s – but rather as part of a network of political, formal and affective resonances whose echoes can still be heard today.

The reconsideration of Absalon’s work almost thirty years after his death necessitates a reflection of his singularity as well as his proximity to a certain generation of artists that emerged onto the international stage at the turn of the nineties. Absalon’s work – extended entirely towards a will to live and on his own terms – should be situated with those artists who, particularly in the context of the fight against AIDS, put aside any prevarication which had once separated activism from artistic practice in order to immerse themselves in practices motivated by the urgency and imperative necessity to exist and bear witness to this existence. These are embodied denunciations of mechanisms of oppression and determinism, made into performances and physically “incorporated”, that places Absalon’s searing career retrospectively: not within the hypothetical spirit of his time – the 1990s – but rather as part of a network of political, formal and affective resonances whose echoes can still be heard today.

Curators: Guillaume Désanges and François Piron

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Barricades

July 2023
MAGASIN III JAFFA

Artists: Absalon, Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, Saher Miari, Shahar Yahalom.

Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power. […] Hence there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent; still others that are quick to compromise, interested, or sacrificial.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 95–96.

Barricades, broken windows, fire, and destruction are the visual associations conjured up by the term “resistance.” But resistance is not always antithetical to power structures. Even when it acts against them, it is part of them, sharing methods, materials, and forms with them, existing on their margins, or reproducing them within itself. The attempt to undermine the structures of power thus involves an act of internal subversion. Resistance to power is also resistance to the power that nests within you. It identifies its traces inside itself and rejects that power via continuous acts of construction and renewal. The Israeli present is a good case in point.

The engagement with the interrelations between resistance and construction in the current exhibition was inspired by the works of Absalon (Meir Eshel), who was born in Israel and worked in France from 1987 until his untimely death in 1993. His oeuvre spanned white architectural models and structures, video works and drawings, exploring the body’s place within the social and political order.[1] His last and most comprehensive project, Cells (Cellules), was a series of six habitation units for only one person, which he planned to install in six major cities around the world. Built of wood and cardboard and painted white, these minimalist, ascetic cells, designed according to his own dimensions, were meant to explore the possibility of a space of seclusion and introspection in close proximity to city life. In the explanation accompanying Absalon’s 1993 exhibition Cells at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, he referred to his Cells as part of a dialectic of resistance:

The Cell is a mechanism that conditions my movements. With time and habit, this mechanism will become my comfort. […] The project’s necessity springs from the constraints imposed […] by an aesthetic universe wherein things are standardized, average. […] I would like to make these Cells my homes, where I define my sensations, cultivate my behaviors. These homes will be a means of resistance to a society that keeps me from becoming what I must become.
Absalon, Cellules (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1993), n.p.

The exhibition features two video works by Absalon that, according to the artist, manifest the same dialectic.[2] He described the earlier work, Proposals for Habitation (1991)—shot in an abstract setting where the actor, his actions, and the objects he uses are not recognizable—as a metaphor for the manner in which social structures control and dictate the individual’s everyday life. On the other hand, referring to the second, sequel video, Solutions (1992), where he shot himself in an easily recognizable environment preforming routine actions, he described it as a series of suggested solutions to life itself, no longer a metaphor. The structure in both video works is a domestic space that provides the body with protection, while at the same time restricting and suppressing it. Narrow and claustrophobic, it does not allow room for movement, bearing resemblance to the structures where the power operates, but it is also the place from which Absalon constitutes himself as a resisting individual and as an artist.

Karmit Galili
Curator, Magasin III Jaffa, 2023

–

[1] See Moshe Ninio, “Radiant Non-Vision, or the Hazy Edges of Darkness: On the Six Cells Absalon Built for Himself,” cat. Absalon (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2013), p. 205.
[2] See “I Can Say ‘No’ and Still Continue to Live,” lecture by Absalon at École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts, Paris, May 4, 1993, transcribed in: cat. Absalon (Berlin: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2001), pp. 257–269, trans. Maike Meinert.

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/site/assets/files/1029/absalon-placeholder.jpg — © Florian Kleinefenn

Meir Eshel, the eldest of Adele and Elie Eshel's four children, was born on December 26, 1964, in the city of Ashdod. Adele, Meir's mother, was a housewife, and Elie, his father, was an industrial electrician. Eshel spent most of his childhood in the city of Ashdod; from a young age, he was portrayed as a charismatic boy known for his courage and daring when he led the neighborhood children on adventures in the area, the port breakwater, and the pristine dunes that surrounded the city. Due to the intention to include him in a high school drawing study program (which he did not want), he decided at the age of 15 to move to the Israel Air Force (IAF) Technological College in Haifa. His parents supported the move, mainly due to their fear of it degenerating into incidents of violence and crime in the city. Despite the difficulty in gaining authority and discipline, Eshel graduated successfully. In 1982, he enlisted in the IDF and served about five phantom planes at the Air Force base in the Hatzerim.

Upon his release from the army in 1985–1987, Eshel lived in the dunes on the beach south of Ashdod, where he built himself a wooden hut ("husha"; arbic name for hut) and made a living from making jewelry at the beach. Eshel had a habit of visiting the Dead Sea and Sinai's deserted beaches and staying there for long periods. In a later interview, Avshalom described this period: "I built my first house when I was twenty: I was discharged from the army in a terrible condition and went to the desert. [...] I did not know anything about art then, I only knew the name Picasso, but I never saw his works. [...] For about a year, I lived with Bedouins in Sinai; I had a fantasy about living in the desert. I believed I could do it until I realized it did not satisfy me "[1]. From this period, a small number of works he created remain. These works carry a bricolage character. In his work CULTURE (1986), Eshel created models of a knife, fork, spoon, and spoon made of wood and paper, hung with a wire inside a cardboard box as if they were ethnographic finds.

In 1987, with the help of money he saved from the sale of the jewelry he created, Eshel flew to Paris, where he planned to save some more money and start a backpacking trip. At first, he lived in his uncle's house (his mother's brother) Maurice Amsellem and worked in renovation of houses and apartments. He soon moved into the apartment of his uncle Jacques Ohayon, his father's brother, an architectural researcher. Through Ohayon, Eshel met important artists who were deeply impressed by his personality, including Christian Boltansky and Annette Message, for whom he also served as a photography model for her works. Eshel's plan to travel the world was delayed; He remained in Paris and began studying art at the Paris-Sergey High School of the Arts (ENSAPC) and attending Boltanski's weekly class at the National High School of the Arts (ENSB-A). During this time, he adopted the name "Absalon", which was given to him as a nickname by one of his uncle's friends, due to the great resemblance between him and the figure of the biblical Absalom, as it appeared in a well-known work (the writer has no certainty as to the identity of the work).

Absalon first participated in a group exhibition held in 1987 at the Villa Alésia in Paris. Between 1987 and 1991, Absalon created a series of works that dealt with the arrangement of objects in a given space. In his early works from the series, Absalon used ready-made objects that were painted or sprinkled with gypsum powder. For example, in the installation SOLITARY ROOM (first version; 1987), he presented a living space emptied of every personal dimension. The walls and basic furniture left in it were painted white, which gave the space a monastic look. From 1988 onwards, Absalon began to create such objects and objects himself. In my conversations with Absalon he has often questioned how we take for granted the shape of everyday objects in our lives. For example, he asked, "Do a fork, knife, table, bed, etc. have to look like we're used to?" In the PROPOSAL FOR A HABITAT (1990), he created a white container in which geometric elements made of wood, cardboard, and plaster and painted white were arranged.

In 1989, Jacques Ohayon died of the HIV virus. Absalon, who tool care of his uncle, soon discovered that he too was carrying the HIV virus. In 1990 he met the artist Marie-Ange Guilleminot, both of whom participated in a group exhibition in Clisson. Despite his illness, we played for his partner until his last day.

In 1991 he moved to live and work in an atelier that had previously served the sculptor Jacques Lifshitz. This is a three-story house, built in three spaces, designed by the architect Le Corbusier-Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in the area of Boulogne in Paris. The space was made available to him by a relative lawyer named François Lasry, who wanted to preserve the building according to the way Absalon interprets the architect's work. Absalon described his new home as: "a thinking space (the tallest and smallest), a creative space, and a display space." He renovated the space by emptying the entire contents of the house, spraying plaster on the built walls, and furnishing it with a minimal number of pieces of furniture - a bed, a chair, and two stools for the guests. At that time, AIDS illness had already broken out in Absalon's body, and he would later describe to me the renovation as an action guided by a feeling of running out of time.

Knowing of his illness, which he had hidden from most of his acquaintances and family members, Absalon began to create a large-scale project that included the construction of six residential houses he had designed for himself. These monastic houses, which he called "cells", were intended to be located in six city centers around the world (Paris, Zurich, New York, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt and Tokyo) and to constitute, he said, the "tailor-made" house. Absalon testified that the anonymous design of his architecture was intended to create alienation "until my existence in it becomes more real than ever. [...] By the very fact that I will live in it, I will create disorder in the structure.

Encouraged by the winner of the Israel Prize, the curator Yona Fischer, Absalon's first exhibition in his homeland, PROPOSALS FOR HABITATION (first version; 1990), was presented at the Ika Brown Gallery in Jerusalem in 1990. In 1992, his solo exhibition was presented at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The work PROPOSALS FOR HABITAT (fifth version; 1992) presented a structure of square spaces connected by passage pipes and a conceivable configuration of tunnels. In addition, the exhibition CELL NO. 1 (1992) was displayed. 1: 1 according to meticulous plans and presented as a whole in the last solo exhibition in Absalon's life, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in 1993. However, due to his death, the construction of only two "cells", made for living was accomplished. CELL NO. 1, which was supposed to be located in the third district of Paris, was completed, including electricity and water infrastructure. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem later purchased the cell to place it permanently in the museum plaza. "Cell No. 2" Absalon did not have time to finish independently, but his team completed it according to his instructions in 1993, shortly after Absalon's death (Hauser Wirt Collection, Zurich).

On October 10, 1993, Avshalom died of an HIV-related illness and was laid to rest in the Ashdod cemetery near his parents' home.

In 2010 a retrospective exhibition of his works was presented at the KW Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin (Kunst-Werke Berlin). The exhibition was also shown at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2012), and the Tel Aviv Museum (2013). In 2021 another retrospective exhibition called "Absalon Absalon" was held at the CAPC Museum, Bordeaux, France.

On May 29, 2022, the Dokaviv Festival in Tel Aviv premiered the film "The Seven Years of Avshalom", directed by David Ofek and Amit Azaz. The film describes my journey through the experiences of Absalon during his life and works in Paris.

Dani Eshel

Solo Exhibitions

1989– Ivry Contemporary Art Center (CREDAC), Ivry-sur-Seine, France (catalogue)
1990– Sainte-Croix Museum, Poitiers, France (catalogue)
1990– Proposals for Habitation (Scale 1:1), Artists Studio, Aika Brown Gallery, Jerusalem
1990– Cells, Galerie Crousel-Robelin / Bama, Paris
1991– Compartments, Kunstlerhaus, Stuttgart
1991– Compartments, Galerie Crousel-Robelin / Bama, Paris
1992– Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (catalogue)
1992– Galerie Etienne Ficheroulle, Brussels
1992– A Universe without Objects, FNAC, Hôtel des Arts, Paris
1992– Kaye Pesblum Gallery, Helsinki
1993– Galerie Luis Campana, Cologne
1993– "Cells," Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (catalogue)
1993– "Battle," Galerie Crousel-Robelin / Bama and Jean-René Fleurieu, Paris
1993– Carmelitenkloster, Frankfurt
1994– Galerie Crousel-Robelin / Bama, Paris
1994– "Cells," Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
1994– De Appel, Amsterdam (catalogue)
1994– Carré d'Art, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France (catalogue)
1994– "Noises," Chisenhale Gallery, London
1994– "Disposition," Château d'Aulteribe, Sermentizon, France
1994– Attitudes Gallery, Geneva
1995– "Cells," Chisenhale Gallery, London
1995– "Cells," Kunstverein, Hamburg
1996– "Cells," Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin
1996– "Absalon: Complete Video Works," Oriel Gallery, Cardiff
1997– Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
1997– L'Institut d'Art et Techniques de Bretagne Occidentale (IATBO), Brest, France
1997– Kunsthalle Zurich

Group Exhibitions

1988– Atelier du Parvis de Beaubourg, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
1989– "Pas à côté pas n'importe où (Not a side, not anywhere)," Villa Arson, Nice
1989– "Carte blanche à Jean de Loisy (Free card for Jean de Loisy)," Centre d'Art Contemporain d'Ivry (CREDAC), Ivry-sur-Seine
1990– "Resistance: Absalon, Art in Ruins, Véronique Joumard, Serge Kliaving," Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers (catalogue)
1990– "Lignes de mire 1 (Lines of Sight)," Fondation Cartier, Jouy-en-Josas, France
1990– "Le Cinq (the Five)," Tramway, Glasgow; curator: Jean de Loisy (catalogue)
1990– "VII Ateliers Internationaux des Pays de Loire" Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC); curator: Jean-François Taddei (catalogue; text: Hans-Ulrich Obrist)
1991– "Collection of the CAPC Museum," Musée d’Art Contemporain (CAPC), Bordeaux
1991– "Movements 1 & 2," Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; curator: Jean-Pierre Bordaz (catalogue)
1992– Documenta 9, Kassel; curator: Jan Hoet (catalogue)
1992– "New Acquisitions," Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Paris
1992– Third International Istanbul Biennale; curator: Vasif Kortun
1993– "L’Image dans le tapis (The Image in the Carpet)," Arsenale, Venice Biennale; curator: Jean de Loisy (catalogue)
1993– "Hôtel Carlton Palace, Chambre 763," 207 boulevard Raspail, Paris; curator: Hans-Ulrich Obrist
1993– "Lieux de la vie moderne (Places of Modern Life)," Le Quartier
1993– Centre d’Art Contemporain, Quimper, France
1993– "Le milieu du monde (The Middle of the World)," Villa Saint
1994– "Hors limites (Out of Bounds)," Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; curator: Jean de Loisy (catalogue
1994– "Même si c’est la nuit (Even if it is Night)," Musée d’Art Contemporain (CAPC), Bordeaux; curator: Jean-Louis Froment
1994– "Le saut dans le vide (A Leap into the Void)," Artists House, Moscow (catalogue)
1994– "Beats," Collection de la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Belém Cultural Centre, Lisbon
1994– "Un papillon sur la roue (A Butterfly on a Wheel)," Espace d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Toulouse
1995– Rudiments d’un musée possible 2 (Rudiments for a Possible Museum 2)," Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva
1995– "Currents ‘95: Familiar Places," Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston