Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects is pleased to present 24 Frames Per Second, an exhibition of new photographic works by Israeli artist Inbal Abergil. This is Abergil’s first solo exhibition with Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects.

Inbal Abergil seeks to examine both aesthetic and societal norms held by Israeli communities and the world at large. Her work grapples with notions of time and memory, adeptly traversing the limits of photography. Abergil breathes new life into this established medium, imbuing her viewer with a fresh conceptual framework. 24 Frames Per Second (2008) is a photo series taken from the audience-perspective of films shown in theaters across Israel. Abergil sat among moviegoers while photographing the screen, and risked evading Israeli security by bringing her camera into the theater. New to the U.S., the series comprises 11 photographs, each measuring 33 square inches.

Hollywood productions are rife with formal and narrative conventions. For Abergil, film provides a challenge – a chase to elude these conventions and capture the ultimate image with only one 24th of a second devoted to each frame. The reel of film, itself a series of rapidly sequenced images, demands more than passive regard. It is a race between the advancing film and the artist’s reflex. Inevitably, the images are defined by a certain degree of ignorance, by what remains a blur. The result of this chase is a group of floating stills, each of which transforms the familiarity of film’s narrative form and aesthetic language into something entirely new. Abergil allows the shadowy space between the camera lens and the screen to permeate the photographic plane. Silhouetted rows of seats, spectators’ heads, and the big screen’s frame lend the images a nocturnal, even haunting quality. Looking at these works as examples of meta-photography, one might recall Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Theatres” series, in which he too wrestles with time, though in his case by slowing down the shutter speed to capture an entire film in one shot. Abergil’s work is multifaceted, acknowledging the visual illusion of film and elegantly exposing, as in x-ray, its bone structure.

Inbal Abergil, once an Air Force photographer, studied photography at Jerusalem’s Hadassah College in 2001 and received her B.E.D. with honors in 2007 from the Midrasha School of Art. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, while dividing her time between New York and Tel Aviv. She has exhibited work in New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, and throughout Israel. 24 Frames Per Second was critically acclaimed during its maiden exhibition in Tel Aviv in 2008.