Artist statement | Creating out of not knowing
I’m a multidisciplinary artist focusing on “site-and-time-specific” processes.
My main mediums are painting, performance, installation and street-art.
My works are “snapshots” of a certain place, at a moment in time, and myself situated there and then.
Indoor or outdoor, in each medium and in every context, I deploy somatic tools to engage directly with my surroundings
and allow sensory input to inform artistic decisions. While the works stand on their own, articulating a specific experience,
put together they speak to something larger, a framework, a mindset.
This way of working entails a few key components:
- Deliberate Spontaneity
- Movement
- The Body: integrating thinking with sensing
- The Unknown: creating liminal spaces
- Intentionality: being aware of change
I arrive on location without preconceived ideas. Rather than imposing my expectations, I let the work reveal itself over time.
By entering a state of 'not knowing', I can open up, observe, take in, and then respond to whatever arises.
The body is an integral part of the process, serving as a conduit of raw experience and expression.
Art making happens not only with my hands and eyes, but also with my ears, skin, gut, breath.
Large canvases are laid on the studio floor as I "dance" on top, leaving colorful traces that mark movement through space.
Brush strokes are synchronized with breathing, sounds emanating from the window navigate my hands, colors and textures
are determined by the landscape, the time of day or night, the season. When I work in public spaces,
the body enters the realm of the work to become another element of the architecture.
Flow and change are significant in initiating and enabling my practice, both artistically and beyond.
I've also been practicing mindfulness for over twenty years, but the fascination with the immediate and the visceral started many years before. As a child, I lived through a near-death experience during an open-heart surgery.
That event, and the healing period that followed, shaped not only my worldview but the very way I work today.
The urgency with which I create is fueled by an embodied understanding of impermanence.
Having teetered on the threshold between life and death at a young age compelled me to explore dichotomies inherent in existence. The clash between internal and external realities, fragility and resilience, beauty and decay. When transformed into the creative process, these seemingly contradictory notions can form symbiotic relationships, allowing for agency, balance and release to occur. My vision is grounded in Symbiosis, in the possibility of a whole that includes the broken parts.
Moreover, one that can only be made whole by this inclusion.
We perceive life as a current of stimulants. Ceaseless information, internal and external, is registered through the senses,
and the brain organizes all that into thoughts and actions. Whatever is deemed relevant or important is formed into a coherent story while the rest is stored away in our subconscious.
To paraphrase, we form and re-form an understanding of reality and ourselves in it, again and again, with every passing moment. This suggests a possibility of re-examining the stories we tell ourselves and others. In the words of Viktor E. Frankl: "between the stimulus and the response there's a space, and in that space lies our freedom and our power."
My story, and the need to find new ways to interpret it, informed two major decisions in my life: working in diverse fields
(the ‘white cubes’, the ‘streets’ and in nature), and merging both my practices (artistic and meditative).
Later on, it evolved into the choice to become a nomad.
I've been on the move since 2017, letting the work lead the way across countries and continents,
without a permanent home-base. Every new place drives the process and vice-versa. Each project acts as a temporary refuge
and the stage where the fleeting takes form. And while it results in tangible works, the essence of this process is performative.
Art & Life exist in the very act of perceiving, of creating, and in the temporary nature of both.
* * *
Technique & Breakdown of series over the years
My technique is mixed-media. I integrate fine-art and industrial materials and tools:
From tools typically used for building walls or floor tiles, to soft watercolor brushes, pallet knives, print rollers and metal scrapers.
Acrylic paints, inks and markers are mixed with various mediums such as glazing liquid, conditioner and silicone oil,
substances that impact the behavior of the pigments in unexpected ways. In the streets, I use hand cut letters and elements made with yarn, fabric, treated foam and duct-tape.
Early works:
In my time as a student, the early works ("Red Heart", 2007/8 and 2009) were naïve, minimalistic drawings.
Bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Figures floating in white spaces.
After graduating and over time, extra layers appeared ("Illusions & Reality", 2010-2012 and 2013),
representing the struggle to grow and resolve past, present and future.
In these formative years, I practiced a slow Sisyphean process in which every piece took months. Then a change took place,
and my practice shifted into a quick, dance-like ritual. ("Release", 2014-2016). These paintings were done in one continuous session, each session lasting between a day to three days of constant work, stopping only for food and short stints of sleep.
The Serendipity Experiment 2017-2021
Between 2017 to 2021 I was immersed in an experimental performance, together with my partner in Mind The Heart! Project.
Our premise was to accept the unknown as an artistic tool, by committing fully to relinquishing control.
We followed the first rule of Improv theater - SAY YES. For this purpose, we donated all our belongings, moved to live in a van
in a foreign country, and invited strangers to dictate our route, schedule, and next encounters. At each point we were sent to, we created public works, daily. What was planned for one year ended up lasting four, spanning more than 60,000 miles (100,000 km) in 48 states across the U.S.A. as well as other countries.
The Unimaginable Horizon 2021-2024 (and ongoing)
Living on the road for four years (of which two in the pandemic), while committing to the totality which the performance necessitated, heralded another big shift in my process. Returning to a normative studio setting in late 2021 uncovered the tantalizing realization that previous inspirations and techniques now felt irrelevant. I couldn’t just pick up from where I left off.
The journey had fundamentally changed the way I perceived stability, home, possessions, necessity.
It altered the way I lived and subsequently, the way I created.
It felt crucial to allow the full breadth of my experiences to manifest directly onto the canvas, and these experiences were
too expansive to fit into figurative works, such as the ones I created before. My previous areas of research,
such as archetypes and mythologies, felt more like crutches than points of reference.
Free from the need to adhere to one "coherent" idea or to convey a comprehensible image,
an uninhibited expression was unleashed and with it, a flood of intuitive works.
Since 2021 I’ve painted over fifty abstract paintings. They represent a form of cartography –
to places familiar and unknown, to blocked paths and to new roads.
