A multiarmed sculpture hovers in the back of the space, with a brain made of coral and vertebrae carved of branches that Moshe Roas gathered on his excursions; an imaginary dragon, the mythological gatekeeper, whose vanquisher will win the kingdom’s secret treasures. Between Roas’s personal and family mythology and the ominous winds blowing around us these days, the dragon holds a dual role: It is the epitome of our fears and at the same time, our protector from them.
The dragon is joined by other indefinable and tangible creatures: a felted stone head, goat vertebra flanked by two plumbs, goat horns on a crumbling copper head, copper staff, a robe of threads weaved on a metal spine. Five pairs of Roas’s right hand, cast in bronze, fused together on a bed-table made to his measurements. The hands are depicted in the act of measuring, referencing a healing ritual that the artist’s grandmother used to perform and was etched in his memory as a formative event where he witnessed the hands’ transformative power. The work’s title, Measure for Measure, imbues the piece with the moral associations of justice and reward, and the artist’s power to balance opposing forces. Roas’s height also dictated the height of the treasure chest, whose ten drawers contain secrets waiting to be discovered, like the kabbalistic ten sefirot.
Moshe Roas’s work emerges from the transience and transmutability of the material. The exhibition highlights his fascination with the artistic act as a form of alchemy. The works wish to distill a spiritual essence held in the material and the wonder of the magic that takes place as the elements shift and change form, as though trying to reach the precise equilibrium between the material’s sculptural manifestation and its various properties.
The sculptures in the exhibition demonstrate the dual nature of Roas’s practice. Some were created in a labor-intensive process that attests to his multifaceted skills and know-how; the other path consists of sculptural actions focused on attention and observation. On his excursions in nature, Roas collects remains of local flora and fauna. The passage of time and the forces of nature have left their mark on these objects, whose sculptural potential waited in the studio for the right time to materialize. In some of the works, fragments he gathered and created merged into one body; sometimes, simply by placing them next to each other he awakened their dormant awareness of being the soul of the world, as though wishing to distill an essence hidden in every living thing, to understand world orders, or operate in the narrow space between life and death.
The syntax of the exhibition came about through assemblages, relations, measures, rhythms, and proportions, working in a threefold movement of contrast, balance, and correspondence. Massive and minimalist stone, wood, and metal objects standing on the floor are juxtaposed with sculptures and elaborate sheets of felt suspended midair; personal stories alongside universal mythologies. Roas faces the dragon and observes it. ^The threshold he wishes to cross on his journey, so it seems, leads from division to union, from the blaze of the battle to the warmth of intimacy, from storm to stillness.
Shir Meller-Yamaguchi, curator