Dover, a port city, which functions as a main passage point between Britain and The Continent of Europe, plays a central role, as an "invisible city", in this series of works. The blinding brightness of Atlantis, which is the first part of the trilogy "To Eat of the Leviathan's Flesh", is here replaced by the white, soft materiality of the chalk. The white chalk cliffs of Dover, marking the shore line, an end or a beginning, where photographed from the stern of a ship, getting farther and farter from the shore, looking from the sea to the shore. Getting farther, the passage of time, and the gradual disappearance of the shoreline, all make present the fragility of the image, a moment ago it was there and now it is gone. This is a central theme in the works of Roi Kuper, and it appears also in the first part of the trilogy in the image of Atlantis, the lost continent, hidden in the sea, if it ever existed. An introduction to the exhibitions of the three parts of the trilogy, was the series titled "Like Stars, Captured in the Water", which examined bright light reflections, which can only come into material existence in the trapping gaze of photography. It was there that Kuper started to examine the relations of materials, their coming into being and disappearance, as time, force, and resilience appear to be variables of limited impact. Dover's shore line is still mainly remembered as a safe coast to all those who survived the retreat from Dunkirk, as with the fall of the Canal Islands in World War II, It was the last shore that stood in face of the German intents to invade Britain. For the British soldiers the view of the shore was a sign of rescue, arrival to a safe place: the phrase "Safe in Dover" expressed in three words, the sense of security this image symbolized. The series of works examines with a distancing gaze the dissolving elements of this iconic image, like a centrifuge, which is capable of separating material elements. Hope, an abstract concept, evasive no less than those flashes of light, is preserved in this series as a promise. This ship had already sailed, already looking back, creating a distinct image whose continuant is the foggy image of the cliffs. A sign embodied in the shore line; an offer of an end or a beginning, which is set, how else, at the heart of the story.

Dr. Vered Zafran-Gani