‘Blunt Liver / Blind Arc’ is a new artist book by Shahar Yahalom printed like two softcover magazines. The ‘double’ format references the dialectic of enmeshment and estrangment which colors the drawings and sculptures she presents. Glass portrait busts, both black and transparent, show two inter-connected figures - like siamese twins - re-conceiving each “head” as a series of intertwined relationships. The structure of the heads changes over time, and every few months they are recast in glass, presenting a never-ending metamorphosis reflected within the sculptural form. A second series of ‘tombs’ echoes Yahalom’s broader pre-occupation with burying and entombment. In these works the mold used to created the glass heads becomes the work itself. The second book is trimmed diagonally across its corners, and presents a series of drawings made on carbon paper kept in the artists back pocket. The folding and engraving produces a symmetry of images that are multiplied differently each time and thus a composition of largely arbitrary doublings is created, which both express and mathematically trace the sculptural folding action.
