Expression Obsession Connection: group show

Mishori’s early works deal with sexual identity mostly through the artist’s self-portrait, and are closely linked to the artifice of pop culture, rock & roll and glossy magazines. In the past 20 years or so, the artist’s activity has evolved from self-portrait to the portrait of painting. The works range from sensual, warm and personal which may be perceived as expressive, to the geometrical which may be perceived as decorative or estranged. Two traditional approaches which the artist disputes and renders untraditional.

The artist demonstrates a free-flowing process between styles and genres, breaking with traditions on the definition of beauty in art. Mishori’s work can easily be exhibited in a white gallery space, but the artist’s fantasy is that his work will be shown in beauty shops, side by side with cosmetic posters and life style products.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the feeling of Israeli Art closing in on itself cracked, and connections between artists and international art centers became available and accessible. The local artists who worked during that decade tried to liberate themselves from inhibitions and pursued a more complex internal artistic dialogue. Art was no longer satisfied with mere conceptual values, and thus took again an interest in the aesthetic values of painting and the importance of the object.

The international art scene of the early 1980s was characterized by an absolute freedom of expression. That spirit of youth, passion and innovativeness pervaded Mishori’s paintings in a natural, spontaneous and unrestrained manner. His work expressed the energy of absolute liberation on the one hand, and a phenomenal mastery of techniques, color use, structure and contents, on the other. His paintings had the flagrancy of sexy nonchalance, but remained true and loyal to their position. His intuitive ability to identify cultural-artistic trends ahead of time, to remain alert and to react swiftly shows his intellectual sophistication and suggests a seemingly super-natural potential to be in different places at the same time.

Although his work is the product of the place, the culture and the society in which he lives and works, it has nonetheless the inherent ability to rise above the local experience and become detached from any context in place and/or time. Thus local and universal meanings coexist side by side.

Adika’s black figurines are placed somewhere between that which is tribal, savage, and sexual, and might be perceived as having magic or healing powers. Set in the studio, the objects are photographed under the beneficial circumstances of natural light. The visual result of Adika’s photographic acts alongside the nature of their installation and reformation as contemporary objects[2], all together stress their questionable array of contexts from which they stem, and their purpose.

In his search for local and cultural symbolism in various time periods through the dissonance that exists between object production and the tragic-iconic load they carry, and through questions of cultural appropriation and visual expressions, Adika is concerned with the evolution of terms such as “taste”, “definition”, “society”, and their ever-changing relevance. Drawing from the rich weaves of the history of objects, David Adika’s Black Market series constitutes yet another testament to the thicket in the production of identity and cultural and geo-political boundaries.

Balabin and Kamel have worked together since 2013. Their interdisciplinary work shifts from different techniques and practices, from hand-sewing hybrid figures, to sculpture, drawing, painting, and site-specific installations. Their research investigates human society and modern culture through a provocative yet ironic practice - sometimes surrealistic and folkloristic, other times more critical and serious - that focuses on gender issues, sexuality, power and control, and represents fears, weaknesses and desires of our contemporaneity.