TEL AVIV.- As small, family-run businesses are gradually disappearing, swallowed up by conglomerates of mega-industries and chains, the exhibition "Work Environments" sends its artists to experience and work in "non-artistic" settings. Work environments which many artists view as a starting point and inspiration for art, including a carpentry shop, a forced-labor camp, a fashion accessories wholesaler, a hardware shop and a building site, have become laboratories and studio spaces, and the issue of locus (the difference between "home," "studio" and "workplace") is being examined.

Each level at the pavilion, including the stairwell, the lobby and façade, encompasses one work environment, with various tangent points made between them through installations, displays that are partly based on the original workspaces, and stretching the boundaries between reality and model.

Each "operational environment" touches upon various cultural, social, gender, historical, economic and political issues. It imports a different everyday world into the museum, while exploring the role of art vs craft and examining such topics as daily routine, manual labor, labor, productivity, manufacturing, survival and livelihood. Concepts that are held by society in an agreement that serves as one of its cornerstones turns deceptive and be studied throughout the process: truth, falsehood, origin, authenticity, forgery, copy, replication, preservation, restoration, reality, fantasy.

The exhibition is attractive and intriguing to a variety of audiences by its very essence and contents. Its timing, at an era that sees the near-extinction of small family businesses, serves as homage to a disappearing world.

Shai Ratner placed scaffoldings originally from a building site on the pavilion's façade. Losing their functional value, they become a deceptive and impressive sculptural installation. In addition, he built scaffolding supports in the lobby.
Meir Tati embarks on an expedition researching Soviet gulags. He recreated a labor camp with barracks, confinement cell, work area, library and cinema. Performances will take place within the miniature human labyrinth, as well as a display of artist books and video films taken at the Perm 39 Gulag Museum.

Dalit Sharon built a metal construction reminiscent of apartment buildings. Her work centers on the stairwell, drainage points and level passages. A film showing changing images of warehouses and the work environments represented in the exhibition is being screened on the stairs.

Reut Ferster placed her studio in her father's family business, Knoller, which markets fashion accessories. In the pavilion she reconstructed part of the shop by placing iron shelves with old boxes laden with various items converted to art. In addition, she made two video films: in one, the shop turns into an art gallery at night; the other narrates the story of her brother, a partner in the business who dreams of becoming a successful artist.

Roy Mordechai constructed his studio in his father's carpentry shop. He uses wood to sculpt the old Subaru that ferries the commissioned works. A huge stump of a finger made of plasticine and tree roots is placed on the car roof. A Formica gallery has been built to serve as a mausoleum for the finger. An airplane made of wood leftovers hovers, hung from a tape measure, above the vehicle and invade scaffoldings and buildings. A video film accompanies the process of building the car from wood, loading it on the real car, dismantling and constructing it at the museum.

The exhibition is on view through 31 October, 2015 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.