Archipelago 

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Painting installation

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The term archipelago originally comes from Greek mythology, and refers to a group of islands "in the great Aegean Sea". My decision to work on a profusion and a cluster of objects corresponds to my treatment of the concept "island" –n an isolated lump in space. I developed interacting systems that deal with motion and periodicity, ebb and tide – with the tension between a single "island" and a group, an aggregate. My  choice of sand stone is associated with a similar tension – that between sand as a scattered and dispersing mass, and its consolidation into a compact and coarse clod.

Between the line of ebb and tide I collected elliptical pieces of sandstone of diverse sizes and volumes. These stone pieces, which are very different from the crystalline hardness of classical marble, are metamorphosing into something else, and are signifying a primal definition of volume and shape. Here there is no winner or loser, as there is no final state, but rather a great potential of creation from the mass of sand grains.     

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Dalia Bar-Amotz 1998