Anat Ben David's MeleCh exhibition at Stanley Picker Gallery blends performance, photography, and video

Anat Ben David's exhibition MeleCh (king, 2014) at Stanley Picker Gallery features a multifaceted installation across two rooms, including performance, photographs, video, text, and a vinyl album. The show centers on a live performance where Ben David uses digital prostheses like echoes and harmonizers to deliver a Sprechstimme vocal style against electronic backing tracks, with stage equipment left set up for potential spontaneous concerts. In one room, black-and-white photographs depict the artist in dynamic poses reminiscent of Vsevolod Meyerhold's biomechanical theatre, while another room presents colorless images showing her contorted body thrown against the ground, all self-shot with a timer. Three videos in the main gallery display bright primary colors and processed vocal sounds, with one video inspiring the title through associations with Egyptian king rituals. The work integrates automatic writing and Meyerhold's techniques to create an autopoietic discipline, exploring themes of the body as instrument and myth production. The exhibition was reviewed in ArtReview's April 2014 issue.