At the Nerve’s Edge
In Hebrew the word “Etzev” means both a biological nerve and sadness.
This is a personal work about Etzev in its two manifestations within our existence: the first, a tiny core within that intricate neural network within the human body, that being, in fact, all that we are. The second is the one that relates to the feeling of sadness. They reside within one another. The physical Etzev (the nerve) carries within it the emotional Etzev (sadness.) In its bodily and linguistic sameness, it reveals the gap, or perhaps actually the profound connection between the physical and the mental. An emotional threshold that begins with something small: a hint, a movement, a frequency, a creak and suddenly the whole body knows: there is Etzev, sadness, in the flesh, in the electricity (Etzev-nerve), in the memory.
In observing it, this image of glass-nerve refuses to stand still. The eye tries to grasp the elusive, borderless inner image, while every shift of gaze or light reveals a different structure, giving it a deceptive dimension. And in these elusive spaces, this glass object appears and vanishes - like consciousness in motion, like a memory that flashes and disappears.
At the Nerve’s Edge, 2025
10×4×80 cm
Glass
Created in the glass workshop of Yuri Stepanov