In this exhibition, there are many contrasts and inconsistencies between      the internal and the external, both conceptually and practically.

 
The starting point is the physical domination of the internal space of the  comme il faut building  by three street artists who perform every day  in the outdoor  city areas of Tel Aviv. Street art, which began as a subversive art-form in urban spaces, is today regarded as legitimate in galleries and museums, although it is still seen as vandalism and illegal in public spaces throughout the world. Graffiti, which began as part of the social, political and economic struggle in cities, has turned into complex street art which is fascinating, and continuously distorts the boundaries between "high" and "low".  There is a question of the degree to which the subversive nature of this art comes into play again in the location of this exhibition: neither completely urban nor on the other hand a form of museum.

 
In the exhibition, an additional blurring of boundaries occurs around  the question of identity, by attempting to check and define the "internal" and "external" identity.  It raises the question as to what extent the external reality in general, and more specifically in a consumer society, influences and molds us as city people. In a work from the eighties by the feminist artist Barbara Kruger, there is a sentence: "I buy, therefore I am", which plays on the sentence by Descartes "I think, therefore I am". The exhibits relate in a similar way to the way we cope with the consumer society. A critical standpoint of the exhibition is directed towards the claim that is widespread in the capitalist world, that buying a product is the same as "buying" an identity or belonging to a certain group in society.  But the very choice of the center space of the Bayit Benamal to house the exhibition represents a level of self-criticism of our uncontrolled consumerism.

 
The third boundary which is exposed and distorted in this exhibition   relates to the internal and external aspects of body and gender. Is our body as   "a material form" the only thing which can determine the difference between femininity and masculinity? Perhaps   the exterior does not always predict the interior. As a result of this thinking, the exhibition has warped the boundaries between man and woman, man and beast, truth and fabrication. In place of these normative definitions, there are many androgynous creatures of exaggerated or distorted sexuality which will challenge observers about the frameworks of their basic thinking vis-à-vis the reality around them and the way it is presented nowadays. 

Sharon Golan