A Regular Quadrilateral

Roni Packer

9.10.2021 – 11.12.2021, The Jerusalem Artists House

The point of departure for the works is a dinner with phosphorescent yellow. “It’s unhealthy,” says one; “it has turmeric,” says the other. The exhibition “A Regular Quadrilateral” feeds and develops, following the history of art on a surface of white-male American abstract. Layers of materiality are spread out at the Artists’ House, playfully yet gravely exploring the impacts of  the impacts of a habitat.

Elsewhere, Roni Packer collects “yellow mini croutons.” She orders them from factories in Israel or finds them in spacious supermarkets in the US, either damaged or new out of the bag. Through them, she realizes that the colors are imprinted on the retina, which identifies what is familiar and what is not. When she returns to Israel, she carries yellow baggage that weighs more than her nuclear family. They ask her for diagonals, the small quadrilaterals, some of which have lost their shape, some are overbaked.

And now she is here, exercising solids on the studio floor, on the walls, in the kitchen. Perhaps this is all you can do with monosodium glutamate—art. To frame, examine, apply color next to color, illuminate with natural light and with artificial lighting. Then comes the acceptance of the thing as it is.

Four main materials make up the exhibition: canvas, mini croutons, bubble wrap, and terrazzo tiles; alongside color—distinct or absent, at times fading and changing gradually. The relationships between shapes, textures, and site-specific meanings crystallize, and the local reading ranges from formalism to pop-art, partly ready-made. Replica templates and patterns of action, from which to produce the same thing, again, and then find the flaws, cover and magnify. Exaggerate in commercial quantities. Make it precise. Delineate the color. With a thought that follows the stimuli and returns from the senses purified; an essence formed from sensation. Consciousness which produces more consciousness in its wake, perhaps like suckling—milk, sounds, gazes. The smell fills the entire floor.