Mouth of Truth -  Solo exhibition, Tel-Aviv, Israel 1/4/21 - 22/5/21

Curated by Yoav Weinfeld and Omer Sheizaf

 

The “Offnobank”  Project space is pleased to present “Mouth of Truth” (Bocca Della Verita) a solo exhibition by the artist Naama Roth.

Interweaving architecture, light and sculpture, Roth transforms the Ofnobank’s space into a corridor leading to a replica of the well-known Roman sculpture from 10th century BC., which was attributed the virtue of distinguishing truth from false. In the exhibition – designated for one observer – Roth creates a corridor-space with a floor made of broken plasma screens. Each step of the observer activates an effect allowing light to come through the screen’s breaks from underneath one’s feet.

In the 80’s and 90’s a  fiberglass replica of the original Mouth of Truth sculpture appeared in malls in Israel and around the world. The face embedded in the marble sculpture became a mechanical fortune teller which reads one’s palm of hand for a coin and tells his future by a clogged statement written on a small printout. Roth’s reading of the “Mouth of truth” luck game, combined with the illuminating broken floor, becomes a fragment of a naïve nostalgic memory in the version of the nineteen’s, when it seemed as if “ truth is at reach”.

Roth uses nostalgia for the sake of reflecting upon the present time and wonder on the wish to foresee the future in a world of uncertainty. She creates a logic in the vicissitudes of a sculpture that converts its materiality – from a marble sculpture from the 10th century BC, through a fiberglass replica in the 80’s and 90’s malls, arriving at a Papier-mâché creation in the current exhibition. In an era when the concept of truth seems more remote than ever, Roth seeks to reconstruct a moment of fate in the concept of truth.