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"Paper Dress" 
23.3.2002 >>
17.5.2002
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IIta Gertner was born in Poland. She lives and works in
Tel Aviv. In 1969 she graduated with honors from the Avni Institute of
Art, Tel Aviv. She is also a graduate of the New Seminar for Visual
Culture, Criticism and Theory at Camera Obscura School of Art, Tel Aviv
(1998).
In her heart Ita Gertner carries a painful and embarrassing childhood
memory, one that she still finds painful to recount. The traces of that
event seem to have left an indelible mark, manifest in her recent works
included in the exhibition “Paper Dress.”
The story is as follows: “My mother promised me a dress. I waited
anxiously. I dreamt of a beautiful dress made of magnificent, soft and
delicate fabric. My mother kept her promise, but she made the dress out of
crepe paper. I put on the festive dress and went to kindergarten. My legs
were killing me the entire walk. I walked very slowly, fearing that the
dress would be ripped and fall off… The dress was short and my legs showed
from underneath the hem. To this day my legs ache when I walk.”
Even as an adult Gertner still dreams of the dresses she envisioned as a
child. She tirelessly tries to make up for this with dresses, skirts and
shirts, jumpsuit and gowns of all colors, but especially conspicuous is
the color red, blood-red that on one hand symbolizes femininity, and on
the other – injury and wound. In this respect, Gertner does not hide the
origins of her work that stems from agony and yearning for beautiful
clothes. The drawn dresses are tantamount to objects that constantly
change function and form. One moment they play the role of garments, and
the next – they form a metaphor for the paper dress of her lost childhood.
Gertner charges full steam ahead on the transparent, formless papers,
filling them with red coloration of blood stains and beads of sweat. She
marks internal organs, accentuates the dripping, outlines the shapes of
ants and other living creatures on these surfaces, and only at the end of
the process does she transform the paper into a dress, skirt, shirt or
jumpsuit. It all depends on the recollective state at the time of
creation. At times she wants the dress to be a representation of a dress,
a woman, a time of childhood. It is in these moments that the markings on
the paper not only dictate the dress code, but also attest to her
aspiration to join the female procession.
The exhibition spans paper-made objects in mixed media.
List of Works
Apron
Black Tears
Dress, albeit paper-made
Weeping and Laughing
Black is Not My Color
Womanly Blood
Waiting
Menstruation
Dream
Israeli Jumpsuit
Jumpsuit
Light
Tender