Rona Shahar: Art and the Girl

2010-05-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Opening at P8 Gallery

Well, wasn't that fun?! I didn't realize there was going to be yet another opening for the same project, but Josef said I must go on showing this to the world. Tigers need the exposure. So here I am again following Ora Ruven's generous, fabulous invitation, smack in the middle of Tel Aviv. I mean, Yafo. Same thing from here - Haifa is so far away from everything.
We celebrated till 10:40 PM when we had to chase the last visitors away (a pair just stepped in, so we let them be for a moment). I had some interesting visits, including an old flame of mine (yes! yes!) - we still have to catch up sometime - and people I did not expect to see there at all, chance meetings, potential buyers and more.
The next few days some more interesting stuff. I am thrilled - a strange mixture of anxiety, hopefullness, intoxication and even some unexplained pain. Working in the studio, challenging and frustrating as it is, is still being in your own world, see?... But out there in the real world, the wolves are on the loose and no number of tigers, however magnificent, can save me from their cold grip. I am scared and don't even know why. But I'm happy too. I guess... take a deep breath and go on. (I haven't a clue where I will be living in two months).
Anyway, to end on a cheerful note, I need to be in Tel aviv quite a bit now, and will greet you at the Gallery myself plus free speech(es) about the tigers, if you're not too tired of them by now. And there will be Gallery Talk too, on Friday June 11 at noon. Let me entertain you.

Panthera Tigris Nisnas - at P8 Gallery till June 11

2010-03-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

Song of Herself

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

The insignificant is as big to me as any

- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

For more than three years, Hadar Gad has been travelling to Kibbutz Ein Harod Meuhad Cemetery, taking in the view and sketching the trees, stones and light. Back in the studio the sketches are turned into large-scale paintings that carry many layers of meaning. It is a continuous labor of love, its significance and symbolism - both personal and collective - slowly unfolding in the process.

Though her parents left the kibbutz shortly after she was born, Hadar Gad always felt connected to the landscape, to the cradle of the mythology she grew upon. Her grandparents were among the founders of the kibbutz and are buried there. Miraculously, the cemetery - an exquisite garden in its own right - hasn't changed since her childhood, and she was naturally drawn to that peaceful back yard.

Visiting the place stirred in her questions of belonging, roots, identity; alongside the artistic journey, she also found the key to confront these questions and resolve them. A remarkably large body of work emerged from these day trips, and in 2009 she exhibited a selection of works at the Ein Harod Museum. The show was titled "Block, Section, Row" - a system used in Israel to locate an individual grave.

The works are generally associated with the myth of the Kibbutz, the ethos of the pioneers, and the place of graveyards, mourning and remembrance in Israeli society (typified by the ever-present, meticulously depicted towering cypresses, characteristic to the landscape). The choice of a cemetery is not random, as this place is central and sacred in Israeli culture. All that is mixed with her own relationship with Death and Memory, and with a quest for Beauty and Redemption that can be found in Art.

Before stepping out into the open landscape, Hadar Gad's imagery comprised mainly paintings of interiors: bookshelves, wardrobes, the contents of the refrigerator or a trash bin - painted with great honesty, a love for detail, a decent dose of humor and a masterful hand. In taking these notes of the mundane, her vision of trivial moments, she attempted to arrest time in its tracks, like so many people do when touched by great emotion. Now the moment has come to venture into time's last stronghold; the cemetery.

Many of the cemetery paintings are drawings with some color thrown on them. Yet somehow the sparsity in color enhances the impression of rich color subdued. The paintings are built using many transparent layers, applying and scraping off paint. The result is a surface that, while maintaining its seemingly realistic appearance, doesn't disclose all of its secrets at once. The attention is constantly shifting between the objects and the spaces between them; inward and outward movement; looking at the landscape but also through it.

The experience of visiting a graveyard might generate strange sensibilities. It is essentially a non-visit; you cannot converse with the dead. But a burial ground is after all a meeting place of sorts - everybody passes through the gate at one time or another. Funerals and memorials aside, there are other voices there, and other gates to pass; the graveyard is also the threshold, a port for the initiated who seek guidance into the ultimate realm.

After breaking through realism - and thereby letting go of the story, symbolism and all - Hadar Gad's sketches become maps, labyrinths, of that other realm. They form flat patterns resembling some animal's skin. They take a life and meaning of their own, which is not merely decorative: Even in their flatness they remain multidimensional. Their transparency suggests shreds of memory, vague, elusive, but often overflowing with feelings of longing, introspection, silence. It's referring to, hinting at, the possibility of a painting, as if the painting exists in another domain and we can only see its traces. The soft golden light in many of the images emanates from a place that can only exist in memory.

The balance between outside - form, surface, brush strokes - and inside - the invisible in the visible - is perfected more and more with every session. She seems to have found that port and gone through it, moving from presence to essence. Painting that addresses these issues takes knowledge, humility and acceptance of the process we all have to go through - bloom, fruit, decay; we all return to the soil and all that is left is our untold story. We too become slowly transparent, become layers of memory.

Eternity lies in the smallest insignificant detail. But we are all insignificant details in the larger scheme, so there is no such thing as insignificant. The measure of importance is in the artist's hypnotized gaze, reminding us that beauty, despite what the postmodernists want us to believe, is rare and far from cliché. In fact it is sophisticated and subtle and cannot be easily discerned. The beauty in Hadar Gad's paintings is something the artist alone detects and points at, not inherent in the things themselves - they can be totally nondescript at times - but an act of charity, of grace. She brings it forth from her own inner being.

Creation is putting order in chaos. As in Block, Section, Row - or finding patterns in the fallen leaves on the ground - order also symbolizes the struggle to overcome the fear of the unknown, the unexplained, the inevitable. Nature's rhythm is the greatest comfort because she offers us Forever; everything is cyclic, there's disintegration and rebirth. Order helps us see some meaning in what seems to be the cruel whimsical turns of fate. Art too is such comfort.

2010-02-20T09:01:00.000-08:00

Panthera Tigris Nisnas

In the past year and a half I have been busy with a project inspired by Wadi Nisnas in Haifa, my hometown since two years.

The idea came to me while strolling through the Wadi, a beautiful if somewhat run-down old quarter, rather quiet except every year in December, when the "Festival of festivals" takes place.

I imagined a few tigers climbing down the stairs in a desolate alley.

Haifa, the port city in a coma, holds a record on both the most marvelous vistas in the country and a huge failure on behalf of the ministry of tourism and local authorities. It's a bustling microcosm under the surface. An impossible blend of veteran Israelis, orthodox Jews, Druze from the Galilee, immigrants from Russia, students from Europe, Caregivers from the Far East and Bahai's from all over. Like every big city it has a number of neighborhoods with each its special character. In Wadi Nisnas the hidden potential is even more evident. The narrow winding lanes with houses attached to each other remind me of a village in Southern France.

Wadi Nisnas is pretty deserted throughout the day, that I can vouch for after having sat there many times to draw next to "my" stairs. It is a mysterious place. I do not understand the language spoken but I can guess what is troubling the residents, or what puts them at ease. Indeed we share the same air and the same city government. It's a twenty minute walk from my home.

In the past year, Haifa Zoo celebrated the arrival of a pair of white tiger cubs from Siberia. But white tigers in general are a result of an unfortunate genetic deviation and inbreeding. I went to the zoo and had a look and took a few pictures. Victims of fashion and whim that attest human cruelty.

This year is the "Year of the Tiger" according to the Chinese calendar. Incidentally or not, the year 2010 has been declared the Year of Biodiversity by the UN. It will focus on endangered species, the tiger being on top of the list. All these facts I have learned while doing the research for my work, this past year and a half.

The project includes two large paintings in oil, as well as small watercolors, drawings, sketches etc.

2007-03-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

My Affair with Craig

Slowly, creepily, a web version of myself is coming into being.
The Arts Forum is a pleasant place to be. I tried several, but still opt for this one - it's so easily accessible and readable and pop-up free. And it's so interesting. Plus, Craigslist feels like a real community. It deals with almost every facet of life. People tell me it changed their lives; they found a mate there, or an apartment, or a job, or a job that led to an apartment that led to finding a mate. It's that simple.
So I guess it's just a matter of loyalty - and a homey feeling. The longer you're there, the less alienating the web becomes. people hide behind their handles - their online names - but you learn to recognize them eventually. And some people seem genuinely befriended, while others seem to attract nothing but hostilities.
Online debates heat up and burn out rapidly. New subjects range from the utterly bizarre to the daily SPAM to the heartbreakingly naive. Some threads are very educational and some are about other fields in art where I have no understanding and no interest. Art is vast.
They have a Sunday art thread and recently pushed into Saturday as well with a photography thread - people just post their pieces and get a lot of positive comments. Some art is interesting, but some makes for a huge yawn. There's also a rating system for posts, from -5 to +5. that's a bit odd, and people often get very emotional over "negs".
So where do I fit in in this web of whispers and moans? And how did I manage to get so addicted I actually check the thread every hour or two? Life is like the internet - ever changing and no certainties, so as i am writing this, i already get a glimpse of the future where Craigslist is no longer at the top of MYlist. Life is short and the internet long.

2007-03-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

Berlitz (or: Humble Beginnings)

If anything can go wrong, whisper the good souls, it will. A self-fulfilling prophecy for the weak at heart, while the true believers would go for the optimistic version: after so many mishaps, things can only get better.
So, after I meticulously damaged every piece, and then managed to fix it somehow, the hanging on Sunday managed to damage a few frames as well. Whatever. It's not the wrapping that counts, right? I mean, I've been to museums and galleries and seen very mediocre art packaged in very impressive frames. It should be the other way round, shouldn't it?.
The exhibition opened on Wednesday. The space is nice, in a provincial way; two corridors, and a lobby, where two images can be viewed from the street. Everybody said it looked great, but I found it hard to get rid of that junior high feeling.
Berlitz, on 51st street, is only two blocks away from MoMA, telling me in a symbolic way that I am just a few steps from fame (and fortune). This is my interpretation anyway. I had a few guests for the opening. Everybody got drunk (except me, of course). I think they had fun; I was too busy counting the money (relax. This is wishful thinking). To sum it up - a small step for the New York art community, a major milestone for Rona Morning Star's career. My ship has left the harbor. I hope the captain knows where we're going because I haven't got a clue.