FAMILY ALBUM
FAMILY ALBUM, the new exhibition at D.S. Danon Gallery in Tel Aviv, presents a spectrum of work by seven different artists: Roni Reuven, Rona Negrin, Iyelet Ginosar-Cohen, Mira Cedar, Ruth Mayon Kuck, Eva Sharaf and Aaron Giladi The exhibition examines each artist's unique approach to production: from the ingredients used to construct the "family album", to the passage of time on the intermediary between the individual and the group, to the different techniques used: objects, paintings, engravings, sculpture and more.
The family album of Roni Reuven was assembled from diverse artifacts obtained from his mother's house, the painter Elka. He exhibits household articles that have been transformed into childhood memories. Laundry clothespins, needles, mismatched bedding resting on closet shelves, a section of a closet with laminated wood and canvas. The majority of the works are small, intimate, and personal.
Rona Negrin, who was born in Greece, carries her culture and memories as bound to and based upon Greek culture and myths, which cast their influence upon her individual life. She works with ready-made materials such as wood, iron, and burnt material, in order to explore concepts such as fertility, conception, and partnership.
With Iyelet Ginosar-Cohen the preoccupation with memory shapes the foundation of her work. Her point of origin are photographs from her family picture album; she disassembles these images in her works onto sections of cloth and reassembles them from new, as if staging anew the path of her living memories. The use of family photographs as an outlet of expression is also used by the artist Mira Cedar. In the majority of the paintings she paints one finds images from the family album much like what one discovers in other albums. Her intent is to commemorate and preserve family memory.
In the works of Ruth Mayon Kuck the topic (of "Family Album") is addressed through open and sealed letter envelopes. The envelopes contain the substance of memories and experiences and the sudden emergence of photographic scenes of places and times that once were and are no longer. A similar concept also appears in the engraved photography and monochromatic prints of Eva Sharaf. She presents metaphors on kinship (images of her family) as appearing in the wilderness of the memory - the individual and the collective.
The topic of human existence is the preoccupation of Aaron Giladi.
The human figure - children and parents, families - are present in his oil paintings and despite their consistent lack of physiognomy, this lack of identification provides a sense of human relationship among the subjects personally as well as the kinship the viewer shares with them, of what they possess because of one's yearning.
In the exhibition "Family Album" both the personal and the collective come to the surface, even when sheltered beneath the shade of a different idea, in the end, the present is built from the totality of our memories. The past, whatever it may have held, assembles the present, loads the reality in essence, and without it we would stray from our path. However this same past, fictional and genuine, is what also fetters us to the shackles of our memory and forgetfulness, through which we can examine our actions in the future to come.
Written by Gili A. Danon
Translated by Roshni Sharma