HUNTINGTON, NY.- The Heckscher Museum of Art presents Michal Rovner: Video, Sculpture, Installation. Known for creating multimedia work on the edge, the evocative Israeli American artist Michal Rovner explores the new fragments of the human condition. Michal Rovner’s art transcends genres. Her work involves photography, video, sculpture, installation, light, and sound. Many of the pieces in The Heckscher exhibition have never been seen publicly before.

Michal Rovner’s dazzling video installations are projected onto walls or onto large rocks. Teeming masses of anonymous figures appear like text or signals over the planes and surfaces. They give a sense of mass humanity, of a dynamic culture, and of man’s vulnerability. These silhouetted figures strike an eerie balance between reality and an invented universe. Rovner is like a scientist looking at the world through a microscope; indeed, some of her pieces resemble Petri dishes. Various adjectives, sometimes contradictory, come to mind to describe the imagery created: haunting, lonely, poetic, graceful, minimalist, busy, and, above all, mesmerizing.

Michal Rovner lives and works in Israel and New York City, where she has had a studio since 1988. She studied in Tel Aviv University Cinema/Television and Philosophy in 1981, and received her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art in 1985. Since 1987, the artist’s prolific work in video and film, as well as on paper and canvas, has been the subject of over 50 solo exhibitions. Rovner’s work is in several permanent collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and Museo d’arte contemporanea Roma (Al Mattatoio) in Rome. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery, among many other institutions, and in 2002 she had a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Some of Rovner’s site specific video installations include Overhang (2000), an installation at the Chase Manhattan Bank on Park Avenue in New York, and Overhanging (1999) at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Rovner’s films have been screened internationally at various museums. She is represented by the PaceWildenstein Gallery in New York.

This exhibition is curated by Chief Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Dr. Kenneth Wayne. Funding has been provided by Jane A. and Barton A. Shallot and by the Consulate General of Israel, Office of Cultural Affairs.

The Heckscher Museum of Art engages visitors through stimulating and inspiring exhibitions, programs, and educational offerings dedicated to a full understanding of the visual arts. Industrialist August Heckscher founded theMuseum in 1920, and the collection is focused on 19th to 21st century European and American art. The Heckscher is located in Heckscher Park, on Main Street (Route 25A) and Prime Avenue in Huntington Village, NY, on Long Island’s north shore. The Heckscher recently completed the Historic Building Restoration Project, and now offers an improved visitor experience. For further information, log on to: www.heckscher.org, or call 631.351.3250.