Peanut Gallery is a stop-motion work by Ohad Meromi. Recorded as a performance on a sculptural architectural model, of a micro stage and theatre, for peanut performers and audience, the modernist structure, with references to Constructivist set design, was originally created for the context of a similar human scale installation commissioned by Art in General in 2010.
Israeli Kibbutzim and the plays of Bertolt Brecht were influences on the greater installation titled ‘Rehearsal Sculpture’ that tended towards a socialist utopian vision with an “elaborate series of participatory events”. The Peanut Gallery was projected when the stage was inactive, in Meromi’s words “the stage as a site of transformative political agency” played with the almost holographic space of projection as potential, and invitation for action and hope.
More info on Ohad Meromi’s website.
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Ohad Meromi (born 1967 in Kibbutz Mizra, Israel) lives and works in New York. He graduated from Bezalel Academy in 1992 and went on to receive his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 2003. He has exhibited internationally and nationally at venues including Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Museum of Arts and Design, NY; The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; Lyon Biennial, France; Magasin 3, Stockholm; De Appel Museum, Amsterdam; Sculpture Center, New York; and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Meromi has received numerous scholarships and awards including a Percent for Art commission (2009), the Fund for Video and Experimental film (2004), I.C. Excellence Foundation (2003), Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize (1998). He was also granted the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2008 Grants to Artists Award.
Ohad Meromi – Peanut Gallery, 2018
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