Ori gersht biography of alberta

Sirens echoed through a room in the Hirshhorn Museum during an artist lecture by Ori Gersht last week. The people around me remained silent, busy focusing on the still life image of flowers being projected onto the screen in front of us. They could ignore the warning, but I knew what was coming.

I bowed my head, closed my eyes and waited.

A moment later, the floral arrangement blew up and a chorus of gasps and rattling seats replaced the sirens.

Time, Violence, and Reality Through Ori Gersht's Camera Lens

The image on the screen was now a disaster area, as fragments of petals and stems fluttered in slow motion toward the Earth. Gersht calls this piece, Big Bang I.

For Gersht, an Israeli-born artist who now lives and works in London, his opus is all about extremes - an exploration of how two opposite ideas can cancel each other out.

For example, in Pomegranate (see video above), he takes Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, a still life painting by Spanish monk Juan Cotán, and pits it against the photograph Interview with Ori Gersht - Musée Magazine NEJYV