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IN THE YARD
Dorit Feigovitch Goddard
translation:Lezli Rubin-Kunda
Ruti Raviv's garden project takes place in the space of her own private garden.
The project is realized and shown in an exhibition space which is singular, and an alternative to that of the traditional gallery space. That space is characterized by a visual neutrality; it seeks to minimalize itself so as not to draw attention away from the works exhibited in it. Raviv offers a different kind of space. In hers there is a non-hierarchical relationship between space and artwork; the work and the space are interdependent, inseparable. The works are indebted to the place just as the place is indebted to the work.
The project was started three years ago. During the course of this period, many versions of the work were produced, in response to the changing seasons and to the rate of disintegration of the materials used. The individual 'pieces' are documented with stills and video camera at different stages of their ongoing process of transformation. The stills and the videos are screened at the opening of the show and during the exhibition. There are videos documenting the work process itself, and others which capture the appearance and behavior of the garden at given points in time. Also included are drawings done throughout this period, which serve to round off the project. Given the ongoing nature of the work, it was difficult to determine a finishing date. This was set for the period of the Wisteria blooming , right before the spring of 2002. At this time, people are invited to experience the garden and to take leave of it.
What, then, is taking place at this domestic site? What is the accumulated meaning that unifies the disparate works over time and space, and gives the whole undertaking its uniqueness?
Entering Raviv's garden, one is confronted by a series of phenomena that immediately sets the activity apart from conventional gardening practices. Bundles of drying weeds (perhaps eighty in number) are seen on the stone wall to one's right, like clusters of sealed cocoons, hanging there with no apparent function other than the sheer declaration of their existence. Further along the path stands an old metal cart, covered with a mass of unruly weeds, as if dressed in a garment weighing it down towards the ground. More scenarios present themselves as one proceeds; erected, planted, or laid upon the ground, these all point to an extraordinary occurrence.
Three years ago, Raviv decided to extend the borders of her studio out into the garden, so that the fence surrounding the garden defined the new boundary of her working space. And the raw materials of the work were determined as those produced only by the garden, all that blooms and withers there without exception. The garden, as a 'ground' for the work turned out to have its own independent presence, active, changeable, filling up and emptying out with the seasons and with the processes of growth and decay. Raviv intervenes in this 'storyline' trying to influence its course by constructing a 'detour' ,an alternative to the natural process of disintegration. She attempts to delay, or to divert the natural progression, to allow for the existence of an additional temporary stage for the materials, and so to put off the garden inevitable enfolding back into itself.
This is an obstinate attempt, Sisyphean, and without any real chance of maintaining itself.
Raviv has taken upon herself the task of "Keeper of the forests" yet she does not protect against invaders from without but rather from decay from within.
The task of protecting, preserving and recycling are expressed in different ways in the work of the garden. There are thirty large balls of leaves, whose circumference ranges from twenty to eighty centimeters. Each ball is packed with leaves from one specific tree; thus there is a ball called 'Pecan 2000' which is made up of all the fallen leaves of the pecan tree over the period of one cycle; and so too with the other balls of leaves.
Raviv gathers together the fallen leaves of the tree, collects their dispersed parts, and preserves them in capsules of time and material. The large balls are new forms arising from forms that have disintegrated. They are placed on the ground, waiting.
In another work 'Trap for Fallen Leaves' Raviv weaves threads around and between the branches of a pomegranate tree, which prevent the falling leaves from parachuting to the ground. She offers them an extra platform, an added life before they fall and crumble. Around the pomegranate tree, over an area of seven meters, the earth is covered with twigs that create a parquet pattern, build from abutting squares. The twigs are, of course, a product of the garden. They were gathered, lopped off at their elbow their thorns were removed, and only then do they join in the work of covering. This protective layer of twigs that covers the ground brings the appearance of a domestic interior to the outside. Here it is the ground itself that Raviv is protecting; in the previous work it is the leaves that she protects from the ground. There is, it would appear, an ambivalence in her attitude towards the earth.
Raviv sows legumes and with them creates a huge spiral form which begins with an embrace of the tree trunk, and continues into the garden in a winding line of over two meters in length. A bright green line is formed, fresh and clean against the dark moist earth. The artist is enlisting the earth in the activity of growth; at the same time she is proposing to the earth to join her in her creation.
Along the length of the wire fence Raviv embroiders tightly packed twigs, creating a partial barrier wall, spread out yet creating movement. Like a gigantic monochromatic painting, it echoes the movement formed on the ground by the sprouting seeds.
Raviv offers up to different trees 'fruits' that she creates specifically for them: she gently places bunches of leaves among the branches of barren trees, or onto the leaves of other trees she ties bundles that look like cocoons waiting to burst open.
Conventions of drawing are contained within the work. The eye that beholds the garden can discern a weaving of intricate lines strictly conceived and carefully executed. These create a drawing in space, on the ground, or along the fences. Thus, for instance , a particular plant (Vitex-Trifolia) growing at a certain angle in the garden is pruned in order to preserve the pattern of lines created around it.
And so it is with the many other details that are hidden and revealed intermittently to those that wander through the garden.
This work in the garden was created by the artist's turning her back, as it were, on the centers of power and influence in the art world, and yet at the same time, fully aware and firmly grounded in that world.
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