I create compositions based on graphic incisions, design, sharp and isolated objects and impose them on artificial backgrounds or natural backgrounds that seem artificial due to extensive handling and cleansing. I create an image unlike anything seen by the human eye – images drawn from photos.
My work examines, inter alia, changes occurring in the Israeli city and society as reflected through elements of style and aesthetics. I began with the study of peripheral architecture, drawing villas in my hometown of Kiryat -Ekron (2003-2005). The outdoor drawings developed into interior photos and specific architectural objects, such as columns, railings and floors.
My artistic progression is also evident in relation to sociological changes. The uninspired architectural simplicity that characterized row homes and Kibbutz structures in the 1960’s and 1970’s is still apparent in some of the “villas”, marking the beginning of the American “quality of living” ideal. The ideal is gradually replaced with the issue of luxury, elements of which are seen everywhere – exotic flowerpots, stairwell and lobby stone surfaces, “bad taste”. The paintings present local signs of the gold rush, pretentiousness, and the strive for power and status. These elements are manifested in the materialistic character that I describe: marble, a hard surface, seemingly European, symbolizing luxury, power and authority. This material is described in the “realistic” painting media. This method of painting is somewhat reminiscent of art that was accepted by sources of power, which totalitarian leaders proudly display throughout their palaces. However, unlike the mythical vulgarity of such paintings, my works are not figurative in the customary form. They seek an abstract texture, as if searching for an archeological layer to provide concrete testimony to the time and society that we live in.
It is a very Israeli form of being. The photos displayed at the entrance to banks or office buildings. The “DIY” homes built in the periphery. The flowerpots removed from their tropical nature and adapted to their cultured state as ornaments. The local aesthetic blurs the difference. The formerly choice materials, such as marble, are now manufactured artificially and apparent everywhere. The bright light that, in past paintings, related to the Israeli sun is now replaced by Photoshopped fluorescent lighting. These paintings are not realistic because they have no realistic base, just stolen, lifeless and processed images, modular images aiming to be detached from locality and Israeli depiction. It is a world without people. A marble world – shiny, ironic, banal and dead – and underlying the death and irony is a painting filled with secrets.