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Sheepdog 2008, Oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm

Solo show at the Tel-Aviv Artists' House 2008. Curator: Orly Hoffman

 

Mein Traumhaus, 2007-2008 or "My Dreamhouse" in German is a series of works which capture disturbing moments of horror and beauty; images riddled with ambiguity that could be fragments of a dream but equally of a nightmare.

Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that the German word for dream "traum", encapsulated in the title, also forms part of the Greek word "trauma" with its obvious connotations; thus a pleasant moment can have a sinister undertone. An overt sexual encounter in a park may seem like an amorous exchange but could actually be a rape scene; a sensual moment in a grey undistinguished hallway could in fact be an instance of forced intercourse. Most of the painted figures remain anonymous, lacking a face or even a sex. They lie on the floor engulfed in darkness, some are partially concealed, or viewed from a distance. They stare through masks or else through the soulless plastic gaze of a doll. Childhood artifacts appear tainted, the female body mutilated and viewer becomes voyeur in an implicitly violent act by an absent perpetrator.

 

The images are pieced together from the internet and the Media, from kinky online blogs and porn movies, from still-life objects which have been carefully staged and photographed and from observation. Some of the objects depicted have been designed by the artist to feature as costumes and props in video works and, once used, they become the subject of paintings (as in Dominatrix 2007-2008). The Rape Series is the result of a single frame frozen from a video work performed by the artist. The videos are created like Old Master tableaux with dramatic lighting and a single, centralized image, then frozen into still frames and re-invented as paintings.

 

 

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