Présentation
My paintings represent a confluence of a number of
interests.
The surface I paint on is built of rags and papers. I like to use papers that carry some meaning,
that evoke the hand that touched them: receipts, pages from medical text books,
pornography, pay slips, children’s notebooks.
I prefer a shirt with a stain, a page that was hand-written over a
sterile piece of material. This surface,
which is left visible through the thin paint, interacts with and against the
painted images. It creates a strange
space which (weakly) denies the illusion of depth of the painted objects and
adds sometimes unexpected connection and meanings.
A top that surface the paintings are – basically –
still-lives. I paint still-lives because
they focus on the minute, the dull and the obvious everyday objects and raise
them to our attention. Like Cotan and
Morandi, I find that there is something pure and true in a well observed
cabbage or vase. Still life is the
painting genre of humility – the diametrical opposite of the Albertian ideal of
paintings that celebrate ‘grand themes’ and the actions of men. It is a feminine genre.
The background usually covers a large percentage of the
painting’s surface. This isolates the
painted objects and creates a melancholy atmosphere tempered by the activity teeming
just below the surface.
I wish my paintings to be slow; to reward a patient viewer.
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Anyone who’s ever taken up drawing, especially life-drawing, knows that
the difficulty comes not from the effort to draw but from the effort to
/see/. /To really see/ what’s in front of our eyes and ignore the mental
image of what we think is there. The reason we don’t really see what’s
in front of us is that it is an incredibly inefficient way to live. If
we had to consciously connect that shadow and that oblong beige shape
with that brownish semi-circle and that highlight to reach the
conclusion that there’s a bear about to pounce on us we would have been
eaten before we would ever have recognized the danger.
We do however, deep inside, retain the knowledge that what we sense is
not /really /reality but a mental projection, an adequate approximation,
in some sense: an illusion. Religion and philosophy from Plato to Buddha
to Christ etc. all attempt to answer that intuitive feeling. All art
(and all science and religion for that matter) aspires to reach the real
truth.
/The Surface:/
The surface on which i paint is made of layers upon layers of bits of
fabric and paper glued together with acrylic medium. This surface
symbolizes for me all that mental and emotional garbage, The Armor,
which accumulates like barnacles on our minds and our souls and which
keeps us numb to the world.
The first piece i made using this material was a life-size human figure
with a plastic bag in his chest hooked up to a compressor on a 4 second
on/off cycle. All one could see about the figure, and even that only if
one looked hard, was the slight inflation and deflation of the chest.
The images i paint come to me fairly intuitively. Their function is, to
a great extent, to give a sense of the relative emptiness of the rest of
the painting.
/Shelf paintings:/
Still-Life in the vein of Cotán or Morandi, that most retiring of
genres, understands that saying something true about important things is
impossible. Life, Love, Death, Society, God, are too big and
contradictory to be truthfully summed in a work of art. Saying something
absolutely true about a few small objects arranged on a shelf is (though
just barely) possible – and that is my aim. Along the way i am tempted
by the surreal and the symbolic but i think the best paintings are those
that stick to the basic still-life arrangement.
/Soldier paintings:/
As a child i loved to play with these soldiers. The paintings are a
response to my experience in the Israeli army where i felt a disposable
pawn. By extension it expresses a feeling i have of being a pawn
elsewhere. That greater powers, not necessarily benevolent, control my
thoughts, my language, my taste, my politics.
/Crane paintings:/
Like a child i am fascinated by cranes; by their lacework trusses, and
am forever amazed that they don’t just fall over. Their improbability
gives me hope that things may turn out well after all.
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One person shows:
1999- Eser EtzAbaot in the
Kibbutz
Nachshon Gallery, Kibbutz Nachshon.
1994 - Angel of Earth and Man of
Heaven (collaboration with Reut Shahar)
Jerusalem Crafts Festival
1992 - Sculpture of the Day
Artist's House, Jerusalem
1
991 - My House and Other Paintings, Seattle, WA
Selected Group Shows:
2006- Mini Israel
Israel
Museum, Jerusalem.
2002-2006 - He’arat Shulaim
Different
locations in Jerusalem.
2003- Arting Jerusalem
2003- Tafeldienst Galerie, Berlin.
2001- The Jerusalem Science Museum,
Jerusalem.
1998- Betzalel Program for Young
Artists - Graduate Exhibition
Betzalel Gallery, Jerusalem.
1997 - Anadiel Gallery, Jerusalem.
Shlush Gallery, Tel-Aviv.
1996- Artist's House, Tel
Aviv.
1994- " Reminiscence and Obsession" Artist's House, Jerusalem.
Bograshov Gallery,
Tel Aviv.
1993- Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
1989- Florence Lief/ Gordon Peers Prize Nominee
Exhibition
Woods Garry Gallery, Providence, RI
"Art Against
Racism", Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence,
RI
;)
