Vri liatzenstein
Sculptor, musician anti performance artist with his braSS 111111CideS.
Uri Katzenstein, 44, is a mild-mannered, tattooed, black-clad
rebel. A one-man cultural band, he is a performer, a musi-
cian, a sculptor. Mr. Katzenstein is also Israel's answer to the
"post-human" work of American artists such as Kiki Smith
and Cindy Sherman, playing with convention and the human
body, teasing and intriguing.
Mr. Katzenstein's work ranges from black silhouettes of
German shepherds to giant brass knuckles; from vials of urine
to videos of himself; from rows of wigs to high-tech recorded
sounds.
A performance piece many years ago involved nailing live
eels to the floor of a New York nightclub. A recent perfor-
mance piece consisted of the artist and a couple of colleagues
discordantly playing electric guitars along with power drills
taped to their bodies. The vibrations created a truly unfor-
gettable racket in the normally staid halls of Jerusalem's
Israel Museum.
He has submitted a demo tape of his music to various record
companies, but so far it's been rejected, with one executive
telling him, "There's no audience for this."
His sculptures include "body instruments"— combinations
of objects and sounds, sometimes activated by the onlooker.
At a one-person show in the Israel Museum in spring 1993,
viewers were invited to turn a long crank attached to a series
of sticks, which then struck a row of drums. The piece could
be either silent, gently pattering, or fiercely clattering. An-
other piece was an eerie, empty pair of shoes, one of which
sporadically tapped of its own volition.
Mr. Katzenstein currently is working on a rooftop laser
project for an 18-story Tel Aviv building. The high-tech effect,
he says, "will virtually extend the building." Another work-
in-progress: "mega guitar," a series of some dozen electric gui-
tars connected to each other around a metal belt. "You can
stand in the middle and play them," he explains. A new ex-
hibition is set for December in the Tel Aviv Artists' Studios:
a gallery with lots of speakers and microphones set up around
the room. A visitor will enter and hear different sounds —
flutes, violins, voices — coming from different points in the
room.
The new works signal a transition. In the past year, Mr.
Katzenstein has turned away from the violence in his earli-
er work, looking inward, creating self-portraits. During this
time, he found himself no longer the younger generation: His
father passed away a year ago and his first child, a son, was
born 11 months ago. "I'm not doing knuckle dusters and
salamis any more," he says a little wistfully.