OFLUXO

“Saddle Point” is a joint installation by Itamar Stamler and Inbar Hagai. It consists of an inflatable and elevated sculptural environment – a stage, an experimental facility or a playground – out of which protrude two special seats for watching two VR pieces, one by each of the artists. Hagai created a revolving stage to watch her piece “Cecum,” while Stamler built a saddle-chair to watch his work “Ransom.”
 
The works create two parallel layers of experience, two experiences of journey (one vertical and one horizontal), in which the viewer’s body and the physical dimension assume meaning and challenge the virtual experience. Stamler and Hagai’s works move through the realms of dream, introducing the viewers with violence and catastrophe, fantasy, passion and toxic masculinity, and explore the relationship between the human body and the virtual space. Instead of relying on the technological spectacle, the artists choose to use VR to create a poetic experience that emphasizes movement, occurrence and rhythm, no less than the content.
 
The title of the exhibition – Saddle Point – comes from game theory, where it means a point of equilibrium, and mathematics, in which a saddle point is a stable point on a surface from which the surface curves upwards one way and down the other, creating the shape of a saddle. Stamler and Hagai examine that point relative to the stability and security it provides, but also as the source of boredom, and try to diverge from it towards realms of adrenaline, experience, and risk-taking.