Title: Exit Only
Date: 1997
Media: installation
Dimensions: 20 x 30 feet
Price: contact the gallery for price
Fassbender Gallery 312.666.4302 |
Gerda Meyer Bernstein is an internationally known Chicago-based artist who addresses thorny global issues. Her work speaks through non-traditional materials, including discarded objects, transformed into emotionally eloquent environments.
Exit Only consists of a long room containing 18 old, battered doors. The walls to which the doors are affixed are covered with maps of countries throughout the world that are filled with turmoil and terror, and where human rights abuses are a daily occurrence. Viewers who enter the room step onto layers of scattered news clippings and documents that attest to world-wide human rights violations. That the situation is inescapable, no matter where one tries to flee, is borne in upon the viewer by the presence of a locked gate, a shrine to the victims, marked Exit Only.
About the installation The Agreement, Ms. Bernstein states that
In spite of the harsh realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I am filled with optimism, affirmation and trust for a peaceful solution that will honor the sanctity of the life cycle for the new Millenium.
The Agreement is a walk-in installation that questions the roots of the conflict and the bitterness between Palestinians and Israelis over the disputed territories, represented by a recreation of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the center of the room is a tower erected on a bed of desert sand, a symbolic meeting place that also resembles a traditional Jewish wedding canopy, a place for a hopeful ceremony and dialogue.
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