Artist Statement
My works and video arts are similar to mental puzzles, where you can travel from one point to another by analyzing a picture’s symbolic objects. there is always something for the observer to discover.
I never force my vision or push my philosophical opinion on the viewers, each and every one, can give theirs philosophy to my creation.
My art is surreal reality, all in my head. The viewer take a journey to places just as real as those you might find in this reality.
When I start working on a new scene, it's like enter to a fantasy dream.
like starting your new only virtual world. “Everything is possible” and in
the majority of my works I am trying to combine visual realities, with subconscious emotions and philosophical thoughts.
I create my virtual world, with 3d software and 2d paint software. Using combinations of renderings, lightings, textures and shapes.
Computers don’t make art, people do. Computers are creative tools much sophisticated ones. It’s a fresh creative tool of a new generation.
Tammy Mike Laufer, born in 1960. Work and live in ISRAEL.
Education and Work:
1974-1978 Graduated from the High school major in Architecture Ramat Gan
1978-1980 Military service
1981-1983 Professional Studies Graphic Design, Technion, Tel Aviv Extension
1984-1987 Projects in Architecture and Design
1989-1993 Taught visual arts and craft in Elementary school, Ramat Gan
1991 Continuing education program for Designers at Sivan College Tel Aviv.
1996-1998 Design of 200 Hebrew fonts series, Studio TML, Ramat Gan
1999-2009 Art Director, Pecan Ltd computer games design, Ramat Gan
2009- Present International artist, participates in exhibitions.
She deals with issues which are often social, not always pleasant. Pain, female body, life cycles, the Holocaust, Social protest.This is her way to express her self the way she deals with various topics.
The unique technique which she creates drawing three-dimensional computerized, is the style of her work and her handwriting.
Solo Exhibitions:
2005 "Virtual Exhibition", Alternative Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa
2006 "Urban", Windows Gallery, Azrieli Center, Tel Aviv
2008 "Metal Dreams", Wohl Center Gallery, Bar Ilan University
2010 "Pigs crisis" Janco Dada Museum Ein Hod, Israel
2011 "WE LOVE THE SIXTIES" Park Ranana, Israel
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2007 "Yezira Israelit", Jewish Center, Manhattan, New York
2009 "Memory of the Holocaust is not Dead", Shoah Film Festival, Cologne, Germany
Biennial of Contemporary Art, outdoor video project, New York
"Outside the Box", Tel Aviv 100th Anniversary, Tel Aviv
The Annual International Festival of Video Art, Miden, Greece
Gilad Shalit – posters exhibition, Hakaze Gallery, Nahariya
"MyMementoVid”, video art project, Scalamata Gallery, Venice Biennale 53
"Israeli Artists' Book", Jaffa Museum, Tel Aviv
2010 "Magmart – Video under Volcano", Palazzo Center for Contemporary Arts, Naples, Italy
"Feel Free to Feel Green"”, Sixth Video Art Festival, Athens, Greece
"Blue Sky", Takada Civic Library Gallery, Imai Art Museum,Nigata, Japan
"Imagine John Lennon" Art director, Performing Arts Center, Tel Aviv
2011 Return, Remember, 2011 Brooklyn Arts Council
"Drawing Connections" al Siena Art Institute Italy
"Memory of the Holocaust " CologneoFF 2011 Smolny University, Saint- Petersburg, Russia
Tammy Mike Laufer
Contemporary Art, 3d digital drawing
Video Art.
http://TammyMikeLaufer.com
Tel (studio)+972-3-6749326
Mobile +972-52-6881960
PIGS CRISIS – VIDEO INSTALLATION
"[…] Our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place in the spring of the year in question […] It was about this time that our townsfolk began to show signs of uneasiness. For, from April 18 onwards, quantities of dead or dying rats were found in factories and warehouses […] From the outer suburbs to the center of the town […] In every thoroughfare, rats were piled up in garbage cans or lying in long lines in the gutters. The evening papers that day took up the matter and inquired whether or not the city fathers were going to take steps, and what emergency measures were contemplated, to abate this particularly disgusting nuisance […] And it was then that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began." [i]
Tammy Mike Laufer’s installation, “PIGS crisis”, is an absurd surrealist, Dadaist work that combines video art with a wall work displaying a single frame from the video. The video is much like a psychedelic computer game in which the electronic trance music of DJ Liam Shachar accompanies a virtual visual creation by Mike Laufer. Using computerized painting and imaging techniques, the two- and three-dimensional are brought together in a composition that includes textures, shapes, and objects formed from countless polygons, enabling it to rotate 360o in space.
Linking the private with the public, Mike Laufer presents an alternative simulacrum, a digital fantasy. Its scenario depicts the arrival of flying pigs on Earth and on distant galaxies. In the course of their travels, they are confronted by viruses, hostile creatures, and other enemies. The pigs fight like characters in a home video game, flying in and out and sowing terror wherever they go. Eventually they grow weary and withdraw back into the game. A string of coins appears, piling up and declaring the end of the game. Who won? Who lost? Time ran out and the game is over. Did we survive the plague? Did we manage to cope with it? And when will the next one come?
The term “PIGS crisis” is a reference to the panic triggered by the current global economic crisis, which has replaced the fear of a swine flu pandemic. PIGS is an acronym for four members of the European Union (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), whose huge deficits and national debts are jeopardizing their economic stability. If they are unable to repay their debts, the fragile house of cards known as the European economy, and indeed the European Union itself, are in danger of collapse. The single currency has gone from being an advantage to a disadvantage, and the PIGS crisis now threatens all of Europe.
Mike Laufer’s installation is a metaphor for the social, financial, and existential crisis that strikes at every generation. One plague follows on the heels of another, causing panic and terror, both conscious and unconscious. And just as in Albert Camus’s The Plague, feeling powerless under conditions of siege, we come together in our fear in an attempt to preserve our humanity.
Nurit Tal-Tenne
Exhibition Curator
[i] Albert Camus, The Plague, Stuart Gilbert (trans.), NY: Vintage Books, 1991, pp. 4-23
