A Gesture to Esher
For many years I have looked at the printing book of the painter-graphics-lithograph, and were amazed by the manner in which his images return to themselves in rhythms, or change shape, yet always fir in with each other.
This creation is made with a pen drawing on paper. The paper was scanned into the computer and touched with colors.
I think that I will try again to combine an image with another and yet another, without end. I think that fractals are somehow connected with this area of painting. I think that Esher has foreseen in his mind, by the use of his graphic experience, one of the most important mysteries and theories of the millenium’s end.
This another painting in which my subconscious originated the first drawing – the drawing was randomly maid as I talked on the phone.
Auto portrait in front of a miror
The creation is a computer-creationed pencil drawing that I have drawn while serving in the army.
This is a quick and expressive drawing that I have duplicated in a Zirox machine and to which I have attached an empty cigarette case, of the type I returned to smoke after those I used to smoke before that begun to cost a fortune.
The type cigarette I returned to was very strong and I think that the aggressiveness of the drawing was done under a sort of influence by these cheap and powerful smokes.
When I looked in the drawing after I completed it I could not recognize myself in it. I wrote, aggressively, “who the fuck is this”. Afterwards, when I computer-creationed the drawing I discovered a form created in the space between the side of my head and the mark of the mirror edge. I emphasized that form, and discovered two other forms that appear to look at each other, made out of the rough lines of the drawing of my cloths.
The fact that I did not originally intend to paint these images shows that it could be the creation of chance and subconscious in action. Here I used again the cloud filter that created – in combination with my imagination – three different forms that appear to share facial features. This is a sort of a vision test, or a question regarding what we see or what we saw before.
Couple in museum
This creation was based on a photo I took in a cafeteria in a museum in Florence.
I creationed the photo with a filter that gives the feel of spatula creation, and on the background I have discovered images that came out of the brown hues of the wall. This is one painting out of a series of 5 – all of which originated in the same photo. In each picture I made greater use of the clouds filter – the more powerful the filter, the more I discovered images, all of which I have defined by contours.
The tourist couple that stood staring at the finest creations of western civilization appeared to me to be disconnected from reality, while at the same time appearing also to be immersed in a culture that is both the result of, and the creator of reality.
Even in the original photo, I was fascinated by the couple – who are they? Where are they? What is their extent of knowledge in art? Is this a romantic tour for which they have yearned all their lives and for which they have finally managed to save money?
Something makes it exceedingly clear that they are together, yet very much apart.
The man looks at the map of the continued town tour, he is the leader, the compass and the planner who looks ahead.
The woman is in a flowery spring dress, and looks at what is happening here and now – maybe she is posing for the camera? Her mature womanhood brings fragrance to the miserable cafeteria.
David and the Assimilated Jew
This creation is a computer creation made out of three different photos. The main photo is a self portrait with a cross, with the statue of David in the background (the photo was taken by a female photographer under my instructions and direction). Once the film was developed I photographed it myself with light sensitive film using candle light and then I added to the photo a special stone called the “Elise Melon” that is quartz based.
The question of my Jewish and Israeli identity has, and always will disturb me, as I see the Jewish people as the people that has brought the greatest progress to this world and had the greatest effect on it – but also brought the greatest evil.
Both statues are lighted by candle light, and they were photographed on sensitive film. This photographed element is one of the few statues I have sculpted, and it appears here in order to show, on the one hand, how different a face can look when viewed in different lighting, an on the other hand, it makes an impossible comparison between the David’s sculpture of MICHELANGELO, and my own sculptured face. My image is wearing a cross – the symbol of suffering . (With suffering I have unfinished business as well). This is meant to comment on the hypocrisy of society. Hebrew hypocrisy means both “colored“ and “Hyena” as well as hypocrisy.
These multiple meanings are for me a possible visual composition, thereby creating a paradox or an illusion that everything is either possible or impossible.
Gladiators In Lebanon
A gladiator in Lebanon – the war between Israel and the Hizballa organization in Lebanon is a bloody one. Many in Israel today ask whether it is worth to guard the Israeli border with Lebanon, where the Hizballa places explosive devices and strikes at the IDF, or maybe we should withdraw to within our borders and protect the country from there. IDF means Israeli Defense Forces.
The final creation was done during the days that my younger brother was a soldier in Lebanon. At first stage I used a photo of a mother and child – they were my Mary and Jesus, and I adorned them with halos.
The second stage was a photo I took of my brother when he was debating with my mother whether to continue and serve in that terrible place. On his shoulder one can see the strap of his rifle.
Here I used the computer to add a sort of fire-core or a bone fire, or maybe I turned them into demons – angry, mad, not looking in the eye. I added the long nose to my brother, because I saw him as Cirano de Berjerak – the officer that was in love and full of magic words.
Still, it could be Pinocchio, the wooden puppet (a well-oiled segment of the machine) to whom life was granted and then it is sent to die for its life.
The third photo was taken in the coliseum in Rome, where gladiator fights took place. I took a photo of my young sister hanged on a cross with blood streaming in her hands, set against the background of this terrible place that was the TV netcreation with the hit show of two thousand years ago.
This photo was added to the two previous ones, after the TV broadcast pictures that were taken by the Hizballa, while detonating an explosive charge which was used to ambush IDF soldiers.
This media exposure of what happens in Lebanon showed the scene of gladiators fighting the wind. The media dismayed me with innovations that are used to subject freedom and art to a world culture which is based on wars.
Match box
In the Second World War -the British Army used the letter O instead of the digit 0 .(zero). When there were no fatalities, the British announced “OK” – namely 0 killed. The Israelis nicknamed their soldiers: “matches” In my “matches” series I endeavored to connect between soldiers and “OK” To connect life and death!
Stop, Border Ahead!
In the center of the creation is a picture of a painting I have painted in the early 90’s. the picture was painted according to the most famous photograph of the singer Jim Morrison. Jim died from alcohol and drugs in a bath in a Paris hotel. My relations with death are convoluted and complex.
The picture of Jim was painted on a day in which I contemplated the question to be or not to be – but certainly not to go on along the road I have been taking. This is the message that I saw when I looked at the image in the original picture.
I painted him in yellow and red colors as are the colors of signs in Israel that warn that you approaching the boarder with an enemy nation, or a mine field.
In the computer-creationed final result I have laid the image of Jim on a page from a book I have wrote in which are described incestuous relations between a young brother and sister. The picture of the painting is driven by a continuous reading of the page, as if marking a territory that cannot be penetrated, yet allows a peek into an act that is considered a biological and a social perversion.
I think that the very fact that the writing is in the holy tongue of the bible, and the act described is one of wonton perversity creates an additional tension – after all, the bible itself contains unspeakable acts, yet it is the most holy book for many nations of this earth. I think that I managed to symbolically signal that we should leave our preoccupation with the holy writings and turn left or right to a new road.
The great goddess
This creation is made out of three different creations that were incorporated by computer adaptation.
The first creation is the one in black and yellow that I have drawn from my imagination – an image of a woman in lack paintbrush over yellow paper. I folded the paper in half and allow the image – or its remains – to become attached on the other side.
The image of the woman seemed to become – within seconds – a collection of man images – found a dog, a small child, and even another woman, sitting with her back to the viewer. I knew it was a goddess.
The fat woman bathing in the sea and in the clouds I have added as an esthetic experiment in form. It is made with a pencil, according to a photo.
Her big fat body amazed me with its ability to be beautiful.
The third part is the clouds – the filter I use so often.
On the right side of the yellow painting these is a sort of a black stain, to which I have added a few lines with a pen. You can see there a woman, or you can see there a man, or you can see there anything else one sees in a Rorschach test. I do not know what people see when they take a Rorschach test, but the more details one sees, the better is one’s imagination.
The Swimmer
The Swimmer – acrylic on wood, 1992. Made according to the philosophic approach that all materials are based on smaller basic materials, down to the atomic level. The creation separates color from color, as expressed in the light stains that glint in the swimming pool, or maybe as a spiritual apotheosis.
Every color layer is made of stains that are actually images that combine into larger images. This is done under the influence of the French artist Sare, and the image of the female swimmer was scanned from Newsweek.
The writing at the bottom of the picture is supposed to give an expression to the information bombardment that we receive from different media types, causing complete apathy, in which nothing has meaning or context. The phrase was randomly taken from a newspaper. Still it must be noted that the tension between the word BURN and the water depicted and the wood on which the drawing took place has riveted me throughout the creation.
Once creationed with computer printing, the wooden background becomes an illusion.
In the creationed parts of the creation, the lighter color is that of the wood itself, as it remains bare as if due to impressionistic influence.
The creation took 2 months to complete.
The wooden board was picked from one of the deserted streets of the Tel-Aviv industrial zones.
