As can (may? ought to?) be expected of a socially committed Israeli artist, Belu Simion Fainaru’s work bears the unmistakable stamp of the precarious political situation that has held the Middle East in a stranglehold until today: geopolitics being a simple matter of life or death, every facet of daily life becomes irreversibly politicised to the core – and that by definition also includes art, “la promesse de bonheur” as Stendhal’s classic, unintentional political formulation would have it. Fortunately, however, Fainaru manages to nimbly manoeuvre himself away from the cul-de-sac of unequivocal political commentary – what’s more, precisely through and in his political Geworfenheit. Fainaru has opted for a more subtle approach: poetic, quiescent of an often surprising simplicity, with a keen eye for the hidden aesthetic qualities of daily life, as in his project for Sonsbeek 9: by means of a simple operation – what the Situationists would have called “détournement” – the bleak and disconsolate public space of an underground parking lot is transformed into a quiescent private interior, complete with three piece suit with inlaid television screens.
Dieter Roelstrate Citaat Sonsbeek 9