The "Bear hug" paintings feature crowded places; cut out images implanted into the paintings. Images of figures and animals invade each others space, while completely ignoring each others presence. Every image bears its past ethology; however, once inside the collage its identity becomes confused. The image balance is disrupted by exaggerations and extensions; it regains its equilibrium within the constructed set of the painting.
Painting images that come from different spheres in the real world allows their ultimate assimilation in "death". For me, this is one of the magnificent powers of painting: to show a history of an image, to preserve it, but also erase it – to create a new image. The new image expresses a humoristic, mocking tone coming from the weird crisscross of figures, their expressions and surroundings.
The images were collected from the Internet, magazines, films and edited photographs, adapted and mashed into a collage and then into a painting. For each work, a fictitious storyboard is built with layers of drawing, photograph and color.
No painting comes out the way it was planned. The medium, size and the painting manner impose their own constraints. So a small, naive photograph of a horse galloping through a field becomes a big, flat and detached horse figure.
"Bear hug" simulates a chain reaction in the paintings, like a collage that is compulsive. An image is embraced too strongly until it has no choice but to surrender, to kneel before its opponent. It is an allegedly warm and tender expression of a brutal and aggressive act. And so images confront in the paintings hugging each other too strong till overtake that remains undetermined.

Project Room: Itamar Shimshony

The Opening

Itamar Shimshony works in the evasive space that is between an art exhibition and its viewers.
You open the door and you're at the opening, but it is still not Itamar Shimshony's opening. To get there you have to make your way through the people, the wine glasses and smiles and go up the stairs.
Now you're there. A small, crowded, packed, confusing room. Something is happening under your feet, on the downstairs floor. Does it sound more fun down there? Or maybe it's just an illusion. The opening space smells of a phony prestige.
A meticulously dressed assistant proposes to take your coat and hang it on a rack. There is a party atmosphere, but the party is not exactly here. Supposedly we're at the backstage, but in fact we're in the heart of the installation.
The space is meaningful only when people come from the outside. Why? Because the work enables a sensory experience of "the opening" from above: a psychedelic lighting, a mixture of sounds, clinking glasses, small talk, forced laughs, in fact "the show" of art as a business. Is it hypocrisy? Facade? Role play? Love of art? Or all of the above? You decide.