Noa Schwartz | 6’

Six minutes – that’s how long it takes to walk from the Tel Aviv-Yafo City Museum to Daniel Shalman’s watch store on 60 Allenby Street. The store and its owner are the heart of Noa Schwartz’s new work, which takes on sculpture, site-specific installations, photography, and the various ways in which art is entwined with everyday reality and private life – both as an idea and as a material.
An experienced watchmaker and amateur artist, Shalman makes sculptural watches out of various objects and materials, such as empty plastic containers of personal care products. The work “6’” was created as a collaborative action and temporary exchange agreement between him and Schwartz,  who incorporated a clock Shalman made out of a mouthwash bottle into Meir Dizengoff’s original desk, on display in his historical office. The exchange agreement is displayed in one of the desk’s drawers, indicating the location of the second part of the work: a sculptural installation Schwartz created in the upper gallery of the store, where Shalman used to do his homework as a kid and today stands empty. The installation is made out of window parts of the store’s display cases. Every hour and six minutes a sound emanates from the installation. Visitors who would leave the museum exactly on the hour and head towards the store may be able to catch the tardy sound.
“6’” demonstrates a connection between a ready-made sculpture and a conceptual collaborative action, one that exceeds a normal neighborly relationship (Schwartz herself lives in Bialik Square). It echoes the connections between a cultural institution and a local business, between quotidian objects and artistic objects, and between personal time and historical and structured time. It introduces questions about the artistic act itself, about collaborations and the possibility of creating unconventional connections in the city.