Avner Sher presents a miniature city, built of small buildings arranged next to each other, with boulevards and streets where visitors can walk. The city is made up of Avner's artworks, made of cork and cardboard that he displayed in some of the world's most prestigious museums and art fairs, such as Art Singapore, Turin in Italy, Art Monaco, or the Bible Museum in Dallas, USA etc.
Avner's works deal with biblical cultures of the Middle East, ancient structures on which are engraved maps of Jerusalem, Rome or ancient biblical maps from the land of Canaan. Obelisks, sarcophagi, works that look like a urban structure between old and new. To these are added cardboard structures on which are pasted old architectural maps that Avner retrieved from his map archive in the office of architects he owns.
Avner Sher is a very famous Israeli architect, specialized in large commercial buildings. He is also a very famous artist and deals on the one hand with the tension that exists between his two practices, and on the other hand with one of the most important issues today in architecture: Does the urban fabric have a future?
The notion of Death conceptually accompanies Avner's installation, whether it's in the resemblance to an imagined cemetery, or in the urban buildings that are nothing more than the tombs of mankind. Is there a future for the city as it is today? Will it serve its residents according to the constraints already at its doorstep: ecological, environmental, social, etc.? Will the human race will finally understand that they are not above nature but the nature itself? Is the concept of the 19th century "city" less relevant to the visionary of humanity on Earth? Is climate change will rapidly shift our perception of dwelling?
This amazing installation represent the past to better understand the future of living on Earth.
Photography: Shoham Efrati
