At first glance, the syntax of this work appears to be composed of various forms of camouflage: a poster and printed matter are pasted onto a plywood panel; layers of white paint are covered with a tangle of scribbled lines that alternately conceal and reveal parts of the support. This strategy of concealment overlays a compositional structure made up of three squares; their positioning divides the work into three equivalent components, disorienting any attempt the eye makes to view them as a symmetrical arrangement. The hatching above and below these squares adds an additional note of disquiet.

 

These visual disruptions to the eye, which is tempted to find stable structures within the work, hint at what is not immediately discernible: for instance, the Hebrew word for "fear" is concealed under the white paint; in addition, a scribble that hints at a path, or ladder – familiar from Lavie’s more symbolic works in the 1950s – dives and vanishes into a haze. A second, more prolonged examination reveals the work's function as a camouflage for romantic images. For instance, the Hebrew letters that form the word “Ilna” allude to the words “Ilana and Raffi Lavie,” which appear throughout Lavie’s works to denote a pair of lovers; the concealment of this and other verbal images is part of a larger strategy of intermittently obscuring and revealing references to the sublime. The very act of hiding or denying the symbolic status of these images is Lavie’s special way of acknowledging the presence of the sublime, whose essence contradicts any objective linguistic formulation.

 

The collaged poster is similar to other posters that Lavie used to paste onto his works. Most of them advertise performances whose dates, participants and locations have nothing to do with the history of art, with glamour or with stardust. These names carry meaning solely for the members of a small, local cultural community, whose microcosm (in this case, the “Chen” performance hall in Rehovot) brings to life mythological images of fear and love from different historical periods. The image of the path, or ladder, connects the heavens above to the earth below.