Decomposition. alef.

Decomposition. alef. is the first of a mixed media series inspired by the work and life-story of Polish-Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) to be shown in a pop-up, site-specific event in East London later this year.

Where: Angel tube station, Northern Line, Northbound platform 2.

Eran Tsafrir's art, predominantly photography and photography-based installations, deals with the way destiny, fate and circumstance shape the lives of individuals, communities and societies. Eran works with untrained sitters, still-life objects and landscape elements. A realistic image of a subject, on colour transparency, using available light without filters, not manipulated or retouched, is where the work begins. Then, moving away from the original indexicality, and challenging the inherent two dimensional limitation of the photographic medium, the work takes the form of diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs and often incorporates materials such as fabric, newspapers, stone, mud, and concrete, as well as sound and light.

Bruno Schulz, the inspiration behind Decomposition. alef. was born in 1892 in Drohobycz (now the Ukraine) to assimilated Jewish parents. He was shot dead in 1942 by a Nazi officer. Schulz’s surviving oeuvre of written and visual work includes two rich, ambiguous and intense collections of stories—Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, and a portfolio of dream-like cliché verre etchings called A Book of Idolatry.