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Opening reception
Saturday, December 4
6-8 pm
Ori Gersht
for images and information
or call
614-291-2555
The Rebecca Ibel Gallery
is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs from the internationally
acclaimed Israeli artist Ori Gersht. Based in London, Gersht has been an
important voice in contemporary art for more than a decade.
The exhibition features
still life works from the Falling Bird,
Pomegranate, and Time after Time: Exploding Flowers series. The artist plays with the classic still
life and literally breaks it apart. Lush and painterly in feel, the photographs
in the upcoming exhibition are inspired by Old Master paintings, from the 18th
C French painter Chardin to the 17th C Spanish artist Juan Sanches
Cotan, to Dutch and French still life painting traditions. The artist restages
these scenes and then uses high-tech devices to add his own twist to the
narrative.
As is most of his works,
the artist investigates the connecting notions of beauty and death. As the
traditional still life is meant to be a reflection of human frailty and the
passage of time. Gersht pushes the limits of photography and film to underscore
ideas of time and the visual experience. His work has been described as
capturing the 'optical unconsciousness,' or the infinite changes that exist in
between what the brain and naked eye register with human consciousness. Gersht
employs cutting-edge photographic technology to accomplish the eternal desire
to suspend time. Rendering time plastic, Gersht creates ethereal works,
pregnant with narrative.
Gersht’s photographs both
compresses and expand time. In contrast to still life paintings, his scenes are
captured quickly through photography. Time is thereby compressed when compared
to the classical still life painting, which seems to depict one moment even
though significant time would have elapsed during the painting process and
changes to the scene would therefore have occurred. Gersht also expands time by
dissecting it. Each photograph represents an exact moment in time. As his
photographs implicitly recognize, though, time is subject to infinite
dissection. While his photographic process reveals fleeting realities that
otherwise would elude human consciousness, since time can never be broken down
completely it will always to obscure as well as reveal. Like Russian dolls,
within every moment lies another.
Originally from Tel Aviv,
Gersht currently lives and works in London. He received his BA from the
University of Westminister and his MFA from the Royal College of Art, both in
London. Over the past 20 years, his works have been widely exhibited
internationally and are included in numerous museum collections including: The
Tate, SF Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.
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