As a result, the title of the project turns out to be a tragic monologue of a choir dying in history, and Sokol's painting turns into a poeticized seamy side of the new conditions of exclusion and oppression in a broad historical and socio-cultural field
Vered Lavy, art theorist
Our Coming was Expected on Earth is a total installation by Haim Sokol, dedicated to the understanding of the concepts of earth and land.
In his project, Haim Sokol yet again goes over Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and borrows his phrase without beginning or end for a project name. Sokol suggests that this citation should be taken literally, on earth meaning on land. This simple interpretation makes the work alarmingly up-to-the-minute as if these words were said by the people at sea, or, rather, the ones in its waters. Put that way, 'us' aren’t the contemporaries living here and now, on behalf of who Benjamin speaks. Sokol’s us are people sailing from one continent to another in search of a better life. Thus, he switches over the citation and, generally, all of Benjamin’s talk from the historiosophic dimension to the geopolitical one.
Not without some self-irony, the artist paraphrases the classic definition by Rosalind E. Krauss and calls his work under the project 'painting in the expanded field'. He implies a variation of painting and installation, which is neither one nor another, still retaining features of them both. The water landscape of the first part of the installation changes to abstract terrains, as if watched from a distance and through the haze. A sophisticated observer will easily recognize references to Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and, naturally, late Turner, and even Romanticism, while we’re on the subject of landscapes. Globally speaking, Sokol’s 'painting' refers to contemporary Western culture. It might be that only this component of Western civilization brings the escapees some hope of redemption. Indeed, in the first place, people tend to flee from genocide, slavery, war, and famine – everything that the Western civilization hasn’t just overcome, but has cast away at the value-conscious level. Of course, not many of the hundreds of thousands crossing the ocean have heard of Turner, but all of them have heard about freedom, respect for individuals, and the value of individual lives. This is where the expectation of expectation hidden in the name of the project is revealed.
Haim Sokol makes installations, sculptures, videos and performances. His art addresses the themes of alienation, isolation and erosion of relations in the modern world. The artist works with archives and private documents to represent the history of the 20th century through the lens of individual lives, explores the issues of historical memory and modern sociopolitical environment. In subsequent years, the artist became a laureate of the professional Companion Prize, a nominee for the Innovation Prize and the Kandinsky Prize. His solo exhibitions were held in leading galleries and exhibition venues in Moscow and St. Petersburg such as Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, CCI Fabrika, Stella Art Foundation, M&J Guelman Gallery, Triumph and Anna Nova Gallery. He is a participant of numerous shows in Russia and internationally, including the 2nd Kyiv Biennial (2015), 1st Indian Biennale in Kochi-Muziris (2012), Mediations Biennale (Poznan, 2010), 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessalonica (2009).
The exhibition was curated by Elena Strygina.
