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Dinosaurs

            In an interview with Shosh Maimon for Sheva Yamim, Frumer described his work process in creating the dinosaur series:

“I build the animals on a wood skeleton until I get a standing sculpture.  The clay is dirt; dirt is malleable as long as it is wet.  When it dries out if often cracks and breaks.  But not the wood.  Then in the baking process the wood skeleton inside burns to ashes and the whole sculpture falls apart.  I then take the shards and do my best to reconstruct it so it becomes again a standing sculpture.  My dinosaurs are not from books.  I invented them.  They are a speculation.  They were created as I took the clay and manipulated it in my hands… The thinking is that all animals have the same basic structure, the same logic, so its easy to invent them.  The dinosaurs had the same internal logic.” (May 14, 1991)

Ruti Director writes in Ma’ariv:

“Every few years David Frumer comes out with a new exhibition and every one is a jump, and with it – hopa! – something completely new.  This time for example he deals with dinosaurs.  And if using dinosaurs as a metaphor is not enough of a surprise  the medium in which they were created completes it.  Here Frumer tackles ceramics.  Of course, one has to realize that he uses it lightly and with a wink, ignoring the weight of history and the established cultural precedents of the medium.  The sculptures are small in size, and are contained in plexiglass boxes.  Frumer, as a foreigner to the medium, as a freewheeling tourist, doesn’t feel any obligation to the technique or genre.  He feels free to do things that Tziona Shimshi would never do.  For example, one dinosaur of his is held by an external metal armature.  Another sculpture consists of only half of the animal.  Yet another is mainly armature, with pieces of clay glued to it like accidental pieces of skin.” (May 31, 1993)

Tziona Shimshi of Ha’aretz writes:

 “David Frumer’s concern is with dinosaurs, an ancient extinct creature of nature.  He builds them with care and a smile, from countless shards and fragments. They turn out to be elegant and celebratory creatures, even though they are incomplete and fragmentary.  This miniature celebration of archeology works on two tracks.  One says, ‘don’t bet on gigantic monsters, today they are but a decorative ornament on the shelf.’  The other is a meditation on the structural options that this creature represents.” (April 6, 1991)

 Esther Zanetberg writes in Ha’ir: 

“In creating those monsters Frumer was interested not in zoology but rather in the extinct; creating something that is no more and commenting on survival.  The dinosaur sculptures are incomplete; they are made up of fragments that are put together by artificial means and placed in transparent display cases like archeological finds.  The material itself refers to archeology, and particularly local archeology.” (May 17, 1991)

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