Avner Ben-Gal
dal 13/9/2005 al 15/10/2005
Segnalato da
13/9/2005
Avner Ben-Gal
Sadie Coles HQ (old location), London
Artist's elusive and moody paintings present landscapes and rural views with a desolate edge, rendered burnt and barren, by harshness of climate or by damage reaped by man. Warehouses and barns go up in flames, harvests are poorly planted and meager in their rewards, and shady looking farmers struggle to make an impact.
Avner Ben-Gal’s elusive and moody paintings present landscapes and rural views with
a desolate edge, rendered burnt and barren, by harshness of climate or by damage
reaped by man. Warehouses and barns go up in flames, harvests are poorly planted and
meager in their rewards, and shady looking farmers struggle to make an impact. The
depictions of marine and animal life emerge from the painterly surface; an iguana
rests atop a plasmatic stone in a burnt out abstract desert setting, basking in the
sun in all its mimetic glory.
Ben-Gal’s preference is for somber, muted tones. A hazy veil appears across the
surface of many of the paintings, pressing us to bring the image into focus and
decipher its open-ended content. The implied narratives marry the content of fables
with the harsh reality of propagation. They evoke the structure of dreams or
hallucinations, as tangible elements knit together to form a worryingly unresolved
picture of a land and its inhabitants in transition.
Ben-Gal’s paintings involve abstraction, on the verge of mannerism, depicting
landscapes and still lives of bones, sex organs, fruit, vegetal matter and ashes.
The paintings shift between intense narratives and painterly concerns, the ethereal
quality of some serving to enhance the intensity of others. Some works suggest
imagined scenes and scenarios, while elsewhere a prophetic strain emerges, as
Ben-Gal contemplates the threshold between dream and fable.
This is Avner Ben-Gal’s first show at Sadie Coles HQ. Ben-Gal lives and works in Tel
Aviv. His work was included in Clandestine, curated by Francesco Bonami, a section
of Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th Biennale di Venezia,
2003.
For further information or images please contact Katy Reed on +44 20 7434 2227 or
katy@sadiecoles.com
Image: Avner Ben Gal, Salt Mine, I, 2002, Tal Esther Gallery, fot. Yigal Pardo
Private view, 14 Sept, 6-8pm
Sadie Coles HQ
35 Heddon Street
London