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Indepth Arts News:
"Anat Shalev"
2006-08-13 until 2006-08-18
Tal Esther Gallery
Tel Aviv, ,
IL Israel
Over the last year, Anat Shalev has payed close attention to what women do. What kind of roles they take on themselves, at home, together with the family or alone. Working mainly with collage techniques, she has staged herself in various scenarios to base the works on. Using magazine and paper wraps to create the textures and coloration that will exemplify best the materiality of the different surfaces, and fusing that with drawn figures, she attempted to create a series of characters that best describe the different roles that women act out: the mistress, the mother, the devoted wife, the strong ambitious career woman, the explorer, and more.
Starting at a certain random point Anat is detaching herself from the original photograph by decomposing the image into color areas, textures, light and shade etc. each part of the image is getting a detailed treatment, not in order to make a precise reconstruction but in order to tell a new tale, that of an internal story of relations between images, shapes, stains and background. To the artist's surprise, the final result resembles the original photograph. She describes it a bit like getting lost in a maze and then, finding yourself back at the beginning.
A parallel narrative runs along the collage works - a secondary set of works is created from the residue and left overs of the main body of works. These marginal works, so called by-products are vital for Anat's whole process: they are as important as the main body of work to her and contribute to the whole.
The mask, as a mythological image strengthens the same idea of assuming characters and taking up the different roles. Trying to move from two dimensional wall based works, Anat is creating dysfunctional objects, a mask that can not be put on orlooked through. An element of decoration is also a costume as well as an adornment or simply just a face mask.....
Anat Shalev, B. 1970 in Israel, is living and working in New York for the last 3 years. Recent solo exhibitions include: 2005 - Cameleon: Galerie Ilka Bree, Bordeaux, Perfect World, Beit Berl Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2003 - At Long Last, Tal Esther Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2000 - Cardiac Arrest; Paintings in Funkoolistic Style, Tal Esther Gallery, Tel Aviv
Selected group exhibitions: 2005 - The Beauty and the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2004 - Pets, Time for Art, Tel Aviv, 2003 - Affirmative Action, Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
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