Rovner: Our Stone Is In Heaven

Many people, contemporary art lovers or not, have discovered Michal Rovner in 2005 with an impressive solo exhibition "Fields of Fire" that he dedicated the Jeu de Paume in that year. And all felt a lasting emotional impact, as this work seems to be extremely powerful play with the deepest questions. Born in 1957 in Israel, Michal Rovner is constantly intersect ancient history and advanced technologies as to affirm the permanence of a constant source, in the words of the great poet Mario Luzi, and remember this truth quite dramatic: the History is what does not cease to begin.

Under the generic title of Makom - space, in Hebrew - it rose in the courtyard of the Louvre two strange constructions: they are square buildings of 7 7 3.5 m, built with stones of destroyed houses in Jerusalem, Haifa , Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem. One of yellow stone, the other of black basalt. And both scarred on one of the walls by two major hyphenation, one vertical and one elliptical. All these stones, mounted without cement, have been displaced, constructed, deconstructed and reassembled by Israeli and Palestinian workers.

We clearly see the risk of the facility: the art of a "message to" heavy vehicle with a call for peace between communities, in short a work with a political, even soothing, as he built around in countries that otherwise, conduct deadly wars without qualms. But guess what: Michal Rovner , very conscious of the meaning of his work, is much smarter than that. At the oral, she is very mean comments, and delivers little more than the bare minimum in terms of hermeneutics. It is his particular genius: she willingly accepts being overtaken by his work.

For the series of Makom goes far beyond a mere illustration of good feelings peace. These buildings cracked, blasted by some as divine wrath, are not penetrable: flaws which can not cleave the passage of a body. However, they allow to see the intense philosophical movement between the limit and the gap between the walls and sky, between the finite and the infinite.

Judaism has always attached importance to the frame with chicanery and requirements sometimes obscure to the layman. On the one hand, the chuppah , the wedding canopy under which the bride and groom are united: it consists of a simple roof, as all sides of this tent to be opened, a symbol of hospitality. On the other, the sukkah , the hut meant to remind the precarious human condition and that she must strike into the roof access to the sky. The Makom of Michal Rovner is a dazzling syncretism of these two symbols, imposing buildings, they are bled on their side, but their fragility is obvious since they have no roof. They are strong and weak, but protective uninhabitable, impressive but doomed to destruction. All Michal Rovner summarized by this astonishing formula, found also in the history of avant-gardes of the twentieth century: " build the ruins . "

This is one of the most modestly brilliant works of our time.