In Navok’s new exhibition, “Slat by Slat,” squares of various sizes are presented. Each square is a frame of possibilities, and into each such frame, she compresses a multitude of shapes, materials, colors, and textures. This act of compression opens up an undeniably three-dimensional space within the two-dimensional plane. There are two ways to interpret these spaces that Toony created: either each work is a multi-layered sculptural event composed of patterns and painterly actions, or each work is a painterly event whose building blocks are sculptural. Either way, the squares are filled from edge to edge — across the length, width, and depth of the frame. The gaze is drawn inward to the layers peeking through each other, and the imagination wanders to other places and times contained within this painting-sculpture. Each component in these works was cut, torn, or taken from a separate and prior process in the studio. Only at a later stage were all the components assembled to serve the act of filling or sealing the space. The abundance of components in each work creates a visual intensity that, at first glance, feels almost excessive. The meeting of types of shapes, lines, colors, and textures feels noisy, even jarring, as if Toony the sculptor has taken on the task of pretending to be a painter. But after prolonged engagement with the works, each one comes to form a unity. The gaze seems to adjust, and then fall in love with each such square ensemble, accepting it as a single entity.

In his canonical essay “Notes on Sculpture,” from 1966, Robert Morris describes minimalist sculpture as a “unit of components.” In the new sculpture, he writes, form, color, texture, and scale are perceived as an inseparable unity. They come together into a gestalt — a whole whose meaning is beyond the sum of its parts. In Navok’s new works, it seems we couldn’t be further from this. The separation of components in each work remains so exposed and clear that the possibility of perceiving it as a unified state is almost absurd. And yet, the whole emerges.

The video work “Good Night Jeannette,” shown on the gallery’s utility room, serves as an expanding remark that can shed light on how the whole is formed in the different works. A green front door with frosted glass windows stands at the center of the frame. Behind it, various objects are dragged and pushed in, gradually filling the windows. The action is familiar; some of us may have even experienced it in moments of fear — the attempt to lock the door tighter, to block and prevent someone or something from entering from the outside. The video cuts between shots of the action from inside and shots from outside. In between, static shots focus on the apartment’s furniture used for the blockade. These latter shots present an aesthetic-sculptural look at the various pieces. They linger on their appearance and function as pauses in the functional process to which they are enlisted — blocking the door. The furniture, like the door itself, like the apartment, and like Jeannette’s name, all suggest that the event does not take place here, in Israel. Hovering above all is a conversation between Toony and Jeannette, of whom we know nothing but her name. Toony operates her, instructs her with a confident and knowing voice — what to move and how to place it. The only thing Toony cannot know, and must check with Jeannette and trust her answer, is whether the door is now locked better. That “better” reveals that there is no total locking, no possibility of completely sealing the private space.

The video work thus casts the painting-sculpture act in a new light. Each square on the wall becomes an analogy to an inner space being filled with various elements already surrounding it — remnants of past actions in the studio. The analogy is two-way, as the act of blocking the glass window door is also revealed as a sculptural-painterly act. The result is a composition of silhouetted forms, whose frame is the edge of the door. The final moment is a function of the unity of the components — whether it’s the completion of a sculpture or painting in which all shapes and materials are organized into an entity greater than the sum of its parts, or whether it’s the blocking of a door against an external threat, in which the accumulating weight of the furniture becomes the lock.
The end of the dialogue between Toony and Jeannette illustrates the analogical movement between the video and the other works in the exhibition:

• Does it close the door now better?
• Yeah, it’s closed. It’s quite stable and closed.
• That’s good. Okay. Thank you.
• Good night Toony.
• Good night Jeanette.

The work is done. The door is locked. One can relax.

Tal Gafny, Tel Aviv, March 2025

Hilla Toony Navok, born in Tel Aviv-Yafo, works across sculpture, video, and drawing. She teaches sculpture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Her work explores abstract and poetic qualities found in everyday Israeli surroundings and well-recognized local materials.

Navok has received numerous awards, including the Rappaport Prize for a Promising Artist from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2020), the Beatrice Kolliner Prize for a Young Artist from the Israel Museum (2019), the Discount Bank Prize (2020), the Minister of Culture Prize (2019), and an Artist Residency Scholarship at Artport (2015).

She is also a co-publisher at Poraz et Navok. Her Permanent public sculptures include Lighthouse (2023), installed on Al Parashat Drahim Street in Tel Aviv, and Sunrise-Sunset (2019), located at the Navon train station in Jerusalem.

Navok is represented by Noga gallery, Tel Aviv and KM gallery, Berlin