Participating Artists
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Re-Decoration, 2011 , acrylic and collage on canvas, courtesy of the artist
Guy Avital
Guy Avital's paintings are created following the logic of collage: scraps of paper, tears of textile, photographs and disjointed images come together to create a whole. Soldered together, they create the frenzy in the painting, which simultaneously intensifies the experience of fragmentation, and celebrates it. You can almost feel the pleasure, which Avital gets from the drama of seeming outdated by the very act of painting. His collage is deeply historical and nearly hysterical; it combines photography and painting while referring to classical sculptures, and contains a collection of picturesque clichés: splashes of color, dramatic brush strokes, abstract geometric and expressionist mannerisms, and persistent presence of the hand, the artist's hand.
Photographed body parts emerge from the abstract painting (feet, back, hands), which anchor it, in a somewhat defiant gesture, in reality. The fragments of the photographed body reveal bits of a story, but the painting as a whole demands to remain a formal structure in a constant flux between construction and destruction. Every painting act is indeed a kind of cliché, and it has all been done before. Nevertheless, these paintings are still able to add a fresh response to the world.
Born in Israel, 1973; lives and works in Tel Aviv
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