Pursuit | Exhibition in the 18th Nidbach Series

Eyal Gottschalk Levi recounts a repeated process in all his paintings: at a certain stage, the painting detaches itself from its original starting point (normally a photograph) and moves on into the stage where it is activated through some kind of memory; of detachment, of daydreaming perhaps or of drowning in the space of the painting. The creative process behaves like the beginning of a dream; where something is recognized as familiar at first and slowly becomes unfamiliar, unlikely and impossible, while still retaining the familiar shape of its initial character. Thus, compositions detached from identifiable context or reality, are arranged and woven together into new fabrications upon the canvas: a snake in the moment before its capture, a figure holding a squid, a view from a window where nothing is to be seen, a Sphinx decorating the grave of Oscar Wilde in a cemetery in Paris, a tadpole swimming in murky waters and more. The fence, window or curtain, another characteristic of the paintings, separate between two worlds; the conscious one which can be grasped, and the internal one which is muddy, saturated, emotionally charged and built from memories and reconstructions.