EXHIBITIONS

In the exhibition ‘Tmunot’ the artist Assaf zur unveils portrait, still life and landscape drawings that he created over the past couple of years. The thirty-five works rooted in the foundations of classical realism - engage with the on-going artistic traditions of figurative art and depict the artist’s life.

 

Zur creates out of observation: he constructs a scene, inserts his own unique point of view into it and ultimately represents a subjective reality to us. His outstanding drawing abilities walk a thin line between photography and drawing, between  ‘realistic documentation’ and ‘fictional creation’; using these abilities he blurs the boundaries of reality and creates a space that allows him to express complex, personal and social commentary all at once. 

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His works interlace into the grand narrative of Israeli figurative art, which flourished  in Israel during the late 20th century and brought with it iconographic references  from European, mythic and Christian drawing traditions - entering straight into the  Israeli modern art world. During the past two centuries realistic depiction has  established itself within the local art field - as a substitute and a reaction against Israeli drawing traditions. 

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David Graves, philosopher and art historian researching the work of Israeli ‘realism’  artists, labels this period of art ‘the New Realism in Israeli drawing’. According to him, it comes down to a shift in the understanding of reality in the contemporary, post-  modern world - to which artists are responding. This ‘New Realism’ highlights the artwork as a space for action where two truths interplay: namely the dialogue between ‘the objective truth’ - the physical object observed by the human eye, that art addresses, and ‘the subjective truth’ that the artist conceives in his work, that includes physical and emotional baggage as well as personal and collective

ones too. 

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Zur brings this tension onto the canvas offering us, the spectators, a glimpse into t his  subtle inside-out duet, where truths intertwine and obtain a figurative form.