Barak Levi Olins

Barak Olins, 16mm film still Giclee print What of the Ashes, 2004
Barak Olins, 16mm film still Giclee print What of the Ashes, 2004

two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, 2004
two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, 2004

16mm film still Giclee print, 2005
16mm film still Giclee print, 2005

two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, 2004
two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, 2004

two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005
two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005

two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, Letraset, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005
two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, Letraset, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005

two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, Letraset, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005
two-sided photo transfer on rice paper, Letraset, montage, plexiglass and steel hinged frame, 2005

16mm film still Giclee print from What of the Ashes, 2004
16mm film still Giclee print from What of the Ashes, 2004

16mm film still Giclee print from POLISH, 2005
16mm film still Giclee print from POLISH, 2005

I am a bread-baker by trade. My artwork derives from an unsettling recognition that my wood-fired brick oven is in many ways indistinguishable from the crematoria of Auschwitz and that I have, strangely,found myself working next to a machine that so closely resembles an icon of vast destruction. What would it mean to bake bread in these ovens? How might I consider the space and slippage
between life-providing and life-reducing in such machinery? And further, how does the mechanics of memory and its inevitable blurring and compression with the present, further complicate this quandary? I like that this remains unsettled, that it offers and maybe even insists on its own questioning.

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