No Lifeguard on Duty
Tel Aviv Municipality has launched an initiative to introduce 30 new outdoor sculptures across the city this year. “No Lifeguard on Duty” by the acclaimed artist, Guy Zagursky has just been installed. You can find this instant icon near the Reading power station on the northern stretch of the city’s beachfront promenade. At the picturesque estuary spot of the Yarkon River and the Mediterranean sea.
The large metal cone is a monumental replica of an old school megaphone, a device used in recent past by Tel Aviv’s mythological lifeguards.
“A simple tin amplifier which became, for me, the symbol of a performance, a nostalgic longing for quieter times, pre-digital days. No Lifeguard on Duty refers allegorically to the proclamation that is so identified with the beaches of Tel Aviv: “Dear audience! At this moment the rescue services have ended…”
From this moment, the responsibility for our safety is ours.” Says artist Guy Zagursky.
The sculpture “No Lifeguard on Duty” is an open amplifier facing the sea like a secular version of a Shofar. It invites the viewer to whisper a prayer into it and then listen to the song of the wind passing through as its answer.
Homage to Brâncuşi
This magnificent sculpture was commissioned for a private collectotion. The work is an homage to the Romanian artist, Constantin Brâncuşi, considered the patriarch of modern sculpture. Zagursky used Brâncuşi famed Endless Columns (1918) as the inspiration for his work. The work reference the “axis mundi” concept, the connection between heaven and earth.
Guy’s take on the original is a harder, steel structure with added triangular mirrors applied irregularly along the entire height of the sculpture. By using steel and mirrors, he adds a layer of toxic masculinity and narcissism in sharp contrast to Brâncuşi’s spiritual, quasi sacred nature. This juxtaposition process of contradictions is very common, if not omnipresent, in Zagursky’s entire body of work.
