Avner Ben-Gal
14 Sep - 15 Oct 2005
AVNER BEN-GAL
14 Sept – 15 Oct 2005
Private view, 14 Sept, 6-8pm
Avner Ben-Gal’s elusive and moody paintings present landscapes and rural views with a desolate edge, rendered burnt and barren, by harshness of climate or by damage reaped by man. Warehouses and barns go up in flames, harvests are poorly planted and meager in their rewards, and shady looking farmers struggle to make an impact. The depictions of marine and animal life emerge from the painterly surface; an iguana rests atop a plasmatic stone in a burnt out abstract desert setting, basking in the sun in all its mimetic glory.
Ben-Gal’s preference is for somber, muted tones. A hazy veil appears across the surface of many of the paintings, pressing us to bring the image into focus and decipher its open-ended content. The implied narratives marry the content of fables with the harsh reality of propagation. They evoke the structure of dreams or hallucinations, as tangible elements knit together to form a worryingly unresolved picture of a land and its inhabitants in transition.
Ben-Gal’s paintings involve abstraction, on the verge of mannerism, depicting landscapes and still lives of bones, sex organs, fruit, vegetal matter and ashes. The paintings shift between intense narratives and painterly concerns, the ethereal quality of some serving to enhance the intensity of others. Some works suggest imagined scenes and scenarios, while elsewhere a prophetic strain emerges, as Ben-Gal contemplates the threshold between dream and fable.
This is Avner Ben-Gal’s first show at Sadie Coles HQ. Ben-Gal lives and works in Tel Aviv. His work was included in Clandestine, curated by Francesco Bonami, a section of Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th Biennale di Venezia, 2003.
For further information or images please contact Katy Reed on +44 20 7434 2227 or katy@sadiecoles.com
© Avner Ben-Gal
Rider, 2005
acrylic on canvas, 150cm x 180cm
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ
14 Sept – 15 Oct 2005
Private view, 14 Sept, 6-8pm
Avner Ben-Gal’s elusive and moody paintings present landscapes and rural views with a desolate edge, rendered burnt and barren, by harshness of climate or by damage reaped by man. Warehouses and barns go up in flames, harvests are poorly planted and meager in their rewards, and shady looking farmers struggle to make an impact. The depictions of marine and animal life emerge from the painterly surface; an iguana rests atop a plasmatic stone in a burnt out abstract desert setting, basking in the sun in all its mimetic glory.
Ben-Gal’s preference is for somber, muted tones. A hazy veil appears across the surface of many of the paintings, pressing us to bring the image into focus and decipher its open-ended content. The implied narratives marry the content of fables with the harsh reality of propagation. They evoke the structure of dreams or hallucinations, as tangible elements knit together to form a worryingly unresolved picture of a land and its inhabitants in transition.
Ben-Gal’s paintings involve abstraction, on the verge of mannerism, depicting landscapes and still lives of bones, sex organs, fruit, vegetal matter and ashes. The paintings shift between intense narratives and painterly concerns, the ethereal quality of some serving to enhance the intensity of others. Some works suggest imagined scenes and scenarios, while elsewhere a prophetic strain emerges, as Ben-Gal contemplates the threshold between dream and fable.
This is Avner Ben-Gal’s first show at Sadie Coles HQ. Ben-Gal lives and works in Tel Aviv. His work was included in Clandestine, curated by Francesco Bonami, a section of Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th Biennale di Venezia, 2003.
For further information or images please contact Katy Reed on +44 20 7434 2227 or katy@sadiecoles.com
© Avner Ben-Gal
Rider, 2005
acrylic on canvas, 150cm x 180cm
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ