Tel Hai ’83, 1983

concrete, 800x700x140 cm
Tel Hai, Israel

“[The Biennial wall] was a moral act declaring artistic practice to be a permanent beginning. This image of the bare solid wall of a home is repeated […] in another situation: on the slopes of the mountains of Galilee, close to the border between Israel and Lebanon, where the tension created by war can be felt. The wall was virtually suspended in a delicate balance between construction and destruction or, in other words, between life and death. Here there was no room for either decorative elements or stylistic strategies.”

A. Barzel, Mauro Staccioli. Vignate ’96, Cexhibition catalogue, Vignate, Palazzo Municipale 13th October – 17th November 1996, pg. 11.

“In 1983 Barzel invited Staccioli to take part in the Contemporary Art Meeting organised at Tel Hai University College in Israel. This led to the idea of constructing a wall projecting over the hillside. Since this inevitably calls to mind the other wall in Venice, it is immediately obvious that there is a striking difference between the two situations. Here we find ourselves in a totally different setting, whose political connotations cannot be ignored. The apparently linearity of Staccioli’s aesthetic language seems to point towards two things in particular: a) The instability of life in these parts of the world: the construction projects over an empty space of some significance, the sea representing possibility lies just beyond; b) Since only part of its foundations are buried in the ground, it is a metaphor for that strong feeling of uncertainty and instability, even of a physical nature, characterising life in these places. Of course Tel Hai ‘wall’ also separates in order to encourage unity and, as if that were not enough, it is balanced to suggest a chance of stability.”

Maria Laura Gelmini, Mauro Staccioli. At the roots of sculpting, Corraini Edizioni, Mantova 2008, p. 100