Plecos

In “Plecos”, a new solo exhibition of Gilad Ratman the artist presents an ambitious installation encompassing video, sound, programmed doors, and wet clay. The protagonists of Ratman’s project are Pleco fish (short for Plecostomus), also known as cleaner fish because of their ability to seemingly clean the aquarium surfaces. But while we tend to think of Plecos from a human perspective, as providing a service to others, seen from the fish’s perspective they merely do so for nourishment, out of a survival mechanism.

The film presented in the Ground Floor Gallery shows two groups of Plecos, open-mouthed, clinging to a pane of glass. They move in what appears to be gestures of silent speech or breathing. At other times, they appear to be kissing or mating. In fact, this is all an optical illusion: the frontal angle of the camera ‘eliminates’ the partition glass, thereby creating the impression of physical contact between them. But in reality, for each fish, the world transpires on one side of the glass without it being aware at all of what is happening on the other side. These aquatic lovers and their seemingly social behavior are part of a larger system that seeks to draw fundamental insights about the way we perceive the world around us and the assumptions we make about our place in it.