Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel | 2015
The exhibition’s title alludes to an in-between state, the elusive moment between darkness and light, when the sky is still blue but the landscape is getting darker, like the in-between that exists in de Lange’s artworks throughout his artistic career. Since his graduation and throughout his work as a designer, planner, architect, de Lange engages in a profound dialogue with visual art.
Marcel Duchamp created a distinction between the “ready-made” and “objet trouvé” (found object), which the artist discovers and chooses due to its singular qualities. The ready-made is usually one object of many, produced in mass assembly line, a nondescript object. Andre Breton defined the ready-made as “an industrial object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist”.
Chanan de Lange’s studio houses hundreds or thousands of ready-made parts alongside items collected over the years with love and care, objects with past and history, with cultural values of their own and very specific associations to the life of de Lange, which serve as a reservoir of memories, or as the painter’s palette.
Chanan de Lange is a Dadaist artist, the spirit and freedom of Dada artist is blowing between his works, characterized by a playful and tongue in cheek tone. Marcel Duchamp had said: “I enjoy looking at the bicycle wheel, it has a pleasing and comforting aspect”. De Lange’s pleasure in the creation process, the freedom with which he operates, breathes life, forms relationships, re-creates, creates two and three dimensional works, full of humor, movement, and imagination. The connection between the different elements forms a new syntax that imbues them with fresh, personal and universal meanings.
The exhibition also includes works on canvas originating in curtains, in some of the canvases there is a use of light. The works on canvas, like the sculptures, stress the engagement with liminal moments, and correspond in a different manner with that hinted in-between.
Curator: Nehami Gotliv