Michal Helfman’s work is constantly playing with its own devices. Her work is informed by cultural and personal aspirations for beauty –it is simultaneously enchanting and reflexive, reporting on its devices. The register in which Helfman’s works operates is one of serenity; it is the aftermath, the rehearsal, the excavated object, the silence of the still frame. In her video and sculpture work The Lesson Helfman revolves recognisable spaces and elements on their axis. The inversion of a classical ballet pole, by rotating the pole on a vertical axis, also resituates the viewer: the piece, which follows a ballerina rehearsing, restages the situation. It constitutes the scene and the viewer with it, in relation to strip clubs and peep shows. Through this gesture of ninety-degree rotation Helfman is able to charge an image with new meaning, while staying true to its beauty.

 

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