Rooms
Inspired by George Perec's book: Life A User's Manual

Irit Katav

October 5 - November 3 - 2007

Irit Katav, oil on fibreboard, 2007, 37cm x 27cm x 2.5cm

R O O M S La Vie mode d'emploi,
translated from French to Hebrew by Ido Basok,
Babel Library, Babel Publishers, 2005

1. Life: A User's Manual (La Vie mode d'emploi)
On the book jacket of Life: A User's Manual, its author Georges Perec writes:

"It was in the final months of his life that the artist Serge Valene conceived the idea of a painting that would reassemble his entire existence: everything his memory had recorded, all the sensations that had swept over him, all his fantasies, his passions … would be recorded on canvas, a compendium of minute parts of which the sum would be his life. The painting would depict the Parisian building where he had lived for more than 55 years. The façade of the building would be removed and it would be possible to see the cross-section of the front rooms… and as in those doll houses where everything is in miniature … it would be possible to find in each room, the people who had lived there in the past and the people who still lived there and every detail of their lives, their cats, their faces, their stories…" These words were an invitation for me to paint and the begining of the journey into the book and through the fascinating creative process.

2. I start to paint my own rooms:

It started with sketches and small oils that were painted after the detailed descriptions of the building's rooms and of its inhabitants. It continued to the second half of the book – where the characters start to become central and the life stories start to clarify. Here I start to discover that there is a central plot inside the tens of stories and the endless descriptions. And I understand that I want to continue to paint in the spirit of the book but to describe my own r o o m s, the same places, sights, memories, stories, landscapes… that are my own "apartment block".

3. A painting, cut into a jigsaw puzzle, is reassembled, the original picture is reconstructed and… is transformed into a white piece of paper.

I continue reading the book and I begin to discover the tenant Bartlebooth's crazy idea to plan a project that would continue 55 years ! First, he will spend 10 years taking watercolor lessons, then he will set out on journey for twenty years to paint watercolors in different seaports all over the world – then he will send each painting to a certain tenant that lives in his building who will then cut the watercolors into jigsaw puzzles of 750 pieces each and store them in boxes, when Bartlebooth returns, for the next twenty years he will solve the puzzles and reassemble them into the original paintings, and as if that wasn’t enough, he will wipe away any signs of the cuts and find a way to erase the pictures and leave a white piece of paper.

4. The puzzle

The idea of a puzzle takes on additional meanings. It isn't only the theme of the plot but also the way the entire book is written – the individual pieces that are seemingly meaningless details, when joined together are transformed into a complete picture. The intersecting life stories of the building’s tenants, concealed and unconcealed connections, details from the past and from the present that are intertwined together…
And in this same spirit, my own paintings are transformed into some kind of puzzle – series of paintings where in some of them a single image appears on two boards and a meaningful picture is created only by connecting them together; and in some of them, the images create a continuous narrative.

5. Rooms and voyeurism

The painter Serge Valene plans to paint his painting by removing the facade of the building and revealing the interior. There is something in that idea that is daring and fascinating! The removal of barriers in all senses of the word, a glimpse into the world of other people, the simultaneous view of events that took place at different times. The idea of the rooms starts to exist in my work as well and I place each of my painting series into a r o o m – into a box. Although the paintings are kept in a box, there is still the possibility of peeking inside…

6. Memory:

Bartlebooth has difficulty reassemblying the puzzle. Is it because the creator of the puzzles tried to set a trap for him or simply because his memory betrays him? The motif of memory appears in the story in different forms. In the detailed description of every minute detail of every room, every picture…out of some kind of need that no detail would disappear, like collecting postcards of landscapes from past travels and viewing them years later, painting portraits to memorialize people and so forth … We also put our memories into albums, rooms, boxes, drawers.
What do we choose to put in those drawers? And what about the pictures that fade in our memories ?

These are the questions that accompanied me as I created my own r o o m s .

7. The puzzle pieces create the complete picture:

Serge Valene's painting was a fantasy that wasn't realized on the canvas – but the book is the painting that wasn't painted! The same puzzle pieces that are scattered randomly throughout the book or as Serge Valene labels them: "the sum total of the minute events" join together and create the complete picture of the building block on 11, rue Simon-Crubellier, in the 17th Arrondissement in Paris.

8. I present here the pieces of my own jigsaw puzzle – my own r o o m s, "the sum total of the minute events" and perhaps the spectator will find in them a room of his own.

1950: Irit Katav (nee Kraid) was born in Moshav Hayogev

1970 – 1973: studied biology at Hebrew University
 
1974 – 1978: studied architecture at Bezalel
 
1974 – 2002: worked as an architect
  
2002: studied photography at the Dada school,

 painting with painters Alex Kramer and Tirza Freund

 and drawing with Tami Bezalely.
 
2006: studied etching at the Jerusalem Printers Studio.

Since 2004: studies painting with Sasha Okun.
 

Exhibitions:
 
2004: Nearby Places – one man show
 of oil paintings on canvas
 at the KumKum Gallery, Jerusalem.

2006: Walking in Landscape – one man show
 of oil paintings on canvas and wood
 at Nora Gallery, Jerusalem

2006: Group exhibition of Sasha Okun’s students
 at the Cultural Center, Jerusalem.

2007: Small Dimensions – Group exhibition
 at Nora Gallery, Jerusalem.