Gina Rotem - Oil Paintings, 19.01.08-15.02.08
Israeli Art, Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem
Gina Rotem is an artist of landscapes of the soul. Her paintings invite the viewer to look deeply into an inner world. In a minimalist style, but with powerful expression, she succeeds in capturing the eye of the viewer, thereby leading it through a unique path of colour which arises from multiple layers of paint. Gina Rotem's paintings can be defined as minimalist. The simplicity both in style and colour and the refraining from details, focuses the view within. Gina Rotem was born in Poland and lives in Jerusalem. She began to paint relatively late in life. Throughout the years she has created ceramics and gained recognition in that field. Already, with her early paintings (from the early 80's), her expressive intensity was apparent and her ability to convey her emotional world on canvas became evident. As one who in childhood experienced the horrors of war and lost members of her family in the holocaust, Gina has carried a heavy burden throughout her life. Life flowed and continued but in deep corners of the soul the memories remained. In her work, the thick covering is removed exposing her hidden internal world. Usually she doesn't paint difficult subjects but the paintings indicate layers of overcoming and covering again and again. Gina's style expresses essence and certainty. It is spontaneous without hesitation. Her colours are dark, warm and intimate, colour covering colour almost lacking “clean” colour. White covers black while one colour surmounts another. The topic of the paintings is of only secondary importance. Gina's objective is to present a picture which will enable the whole to be absorbed at a glance, and from this the emphasis is on the painting itself in its entirety. Recently, Gina participated in the national biennial for sketching in Jerusalem. She presented sole exhibitions in Jerusalem and Krakow, and also participated in group exhibitions. expression, with no need for additional color. Hirsch appears to make use of the Chinese-Japanese reductionism, which along with the European tradition he grew up on, leads to a personal and unique style of drawing. His handwriting can be recognized from afar, and as such, he does not really fit into any existing stylistic frame. Hirsch's still life drawings are the rarest of his works, though in this exhibit they constitute the majority, to which several works of imaginary drawings have been added. These drawings of the imaginary address existential social situations such as fear, sadness, and hesitation. Perhaps most striking is the humor which turns these situations into grotesque ones. It is these same characteristics that Hirsch transfers onto his still life drawings – that which attributes these drawings certain animation, motion and humor. The dishes and the fruit as if converse with each other, move towards each other, seemingly teasing one another, but above all there seems to be some dialogue between light and shade.
The works are not large in size but they all possess immense power and each constitutes a masterpiece of its own.
Ella Klier Ariel
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