After the butterflies

Gideon Smilansky / Rotem Ritov

Curator: Carmit Blumensohn

04.09.2014 - 03.10.2014

 

 

On Thursday, July 3rd, Alfred, a Cooperative Institute for Arts and Culture, will open a double exhibition titled "After the Butterfiles" displaying artworks by artists Gideon Smilansky and Rotem Ritov, curated by Carmit Blumensohn.
During the opening event Gideon Smilansky's catalog will be launched containing works from 2011-2014.

 

Gideon Smilansky, a painter and a filmmaker, a graduate of the Midrasha School of Art, and a member of Alfred gallery.

Rotem Ritov, an interdisciplinary artist, a graduate of the Department of Architecture at the academic center Wizo Haifa, and a member of Alfred gallery.

Smilansky and Ritov are a couple who are cooperating for the first time in a double exhibition.

Smilansky will display large-scale paintings, and Ritov will display a mixed media installation.

 

Smilansky's paintings display a series of nude human figures reclining on long and narrow canvases.
The painted figures at times seem to be lying in a dreaming state, and at times in a death posture.

 

The metaphor of the casket is present in all its strength. The body does not seem to be lying naturally in the contained and narrow space, and a strong sense of condensing and uneasiness arises from these painting.

In the installation "Monarch Migration" Ritov creates seemingly natural environments, where detailed faux butterflies are revealed as "Merkava" tank models, accurate to the last detail.

Monarch butterflies are migrating swarms of butterflies which rest during migration between North and South America. Their migration is a thrilling spectacular. Overloaded tank convoys making way to a battle field is a scary and awful sight. Both occupy the landscape, making it a dynamic space that ignores borders of countries.

The exhibition After the Butterflies refers to the poetic tension between the beautiful and the tragic. In its foundation lies the dissonance between opposing concepts: creation and destruction, beauty and ugliness, life and death.

The echoes of the last war which had not yet faded, and are well heard, do not allow to linger in beauty alone, but rather invite us to listen to the hidden, dark side of our existence here.