NEW YORK.- Michal Rovner’s acclaimed work in photography, film, and video probes the boundaries between reality and fiction. From July 11 to October 13, 2002, the Whitney Museum of American Art will present a major mid-career survey that will offer the most comprehensive view to date of Ms. Rovner’s work. The exhibition, Michal Rovner: The Space Between, in the Whitney’s third floor Peter Norton Family Galleries, will contain 70 objects, including 55 photographic works, twelve monoprints, and three video installations, one of which will premiere at the Whitney. A number of pieces have never before been exhibited. The show will draw from collections worldwide, including those of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Guggenheim Museum.

Born in Israel, Rovner shifted her primary residence to New York in 1987. Like many foreign-born artists who have come to America, Rovner makes art that reflects her roots while at the same time evoking universal concerns. She records staged or actual scenarios with a photographic or video camera, and then alters her source material in the darkroom or editing studio by breaking down resolution and adding expressionistic color. The resulting images emerge from the real world, but are not rooted in reality. "With figures that float and birds that soar, Rovner addresses spirituality, transcendence, and change," said Whitney curator Sylvia Wolf, who organized the survey. "The art itself is not about Rovner’s bicultural experience, but it benefits from the duality, the complexity, and the contradictions that characterize a life lived in two worlds."

In Outside, a body of work made in 1990-91, a Bedouin house in the Israeli desert stands isolated. From image to image, Rovner alters the color, size, and focus of the house. The result is an inquiry into the meaning of house, home, inside, and outside. Also in 1991, Rovner responded to the Persian Gulf War by making art from news coverage of the conflict. She shot directly from the television screen in her New York studio, then changed the color and scale of the images to make pictures that suggest generic rather than specific conflict. In another series, titled One-Person Game Against Nature (1992-93), Rovner made photographs of figures floating in the Dead Sea.

In the past five years, Rovner has made video works and site-specific installations in addition to photographic works. In 1996-97, she produced a 48-minute video, filmed on the border of Lebanon and Israel, which Rovner calls a fictional documentary. Rather than tell the story of a specific military conflict, she used repetition of imagery, unnatural color, and ambiguous sounds to blur the boundaries of reality and suggest a generalized state of hostility and confusion. That same year, Rovner made a video installation, Mutual Interest, in which flocks of birds fly across multiple screens in an enclosed room. A soundtrack that resembles the flapping of wings, the pulsating of helicopter blades, or the rapid-fire pop of machine guns accompanies the video. The ambiguity of the images and the soundtrack evokes a situation of narrative suspense or disorientation--themes that appear repeatedly in Rovner’s work.

Rovner’s video installation, Overhanging (1999), depicts anonymous figures traversing multiple screens in a timeless, ritualistic march. A section of the video was selected for presentation in the Whitney’s 2000 Biennial, and a larger version was displayed concurrently as a public art project on the windows of the Chase Manhattan Bank at 55th Street and Park Avenue, New York. Rovner has made a new video installation, which will have its debut as part of the Whitney’s exhibition. Titled Time Left, it includes footage shot in Russia and Romania.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1957, Michal Rovner studied cinema, television, and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. In 1978, with Arie Hammer, she co-founded Camera Obscura, Tel Aviv’s first professional darkroom space and school for photographers. Three years later, in 1981, Rovner enrolled at Jerusalem’s renowned Bezalel Academy of Art and Design from which she received her BFA in photography in 1985.

In 1987, Rovner moved to New York. Since then, her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions. In 1993, The Art Institute of Chicago mounted her first one-artist American museum exhibition. The following year, a selection of photographs from the series One-Person Game Against Nature was featured in The Museum of Modern Art’s "New Photography 10" group exhibition. Her video installations have been shown at the Tate Gallery in London, at P.S. 1 in New York, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in the Whitney’s 2000 Biennial Exhibition. Rovner’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the Whitney Museum is producing a 260-page monograph surveying Rovner’s career. It has more than 100 color illustrations, 85 text illustrations, a conversation between Rovner and American painter Leon Golub, and two essays. An essay by Whitney curator Sylvia Wolf will trace the artist’s creative development and place her work in the context of other contemporary art production. Michael Rush, Director of the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, scholar of video art and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, will discuss Rovner’s video installations.

A full range of interpretive programs is being organized to communicate the thematic ideas of the exhibition and to enhance the visitor’s experience. Public programs will be designed for scholars, students, teachers, adults, families, and senior citizens.

Michal Rovner: The Space Between is sponsored by the Israel National Lottery, Council for the Arts and the New York-Israel Cultural Cooperation Commission, a joint venture of the State of New York, George E. Pataki-Governor, and the State of Israel. Additional support is provided by Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy; the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; Jill and Jay Bernstein; June and Paul Schorr; Bank Hapoalim B.M.; Susan and Leonard Nimoy; the Brandes Family Art Collection, Tel Aviv; Roselyne C. Swig; Giza Venture Capital, Israel; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Office of Israel’s Cultural Affairs in the U.S.A.; Gabriella and Amiel Brown; Larry and Marilyn Fields; Ami Oren; and the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art.