One of the Mountains

Talia Israeli’s exhibition comprises works ranging between black and white. Large schematic paintings on canvas are joined by contrasting landscape drawings on small-format wooden boards. Sampling reproductions of Renaissance frescos, the Christian motifs are subtracted from the image in an attempt to secularize it: to be left with the landscape alone and examine its imprint, and at the same time—to meet the absence, to preserve a historical reference point to the myth, the yearning for a coveted place, to stretch it to a space that extends between “Disney” and film noir. Israeli delves into these gaps through the hypnotizing power of a winding freehand line in black, which etches the scenery’s silent scream, and concurrently—through hybrid painting, which recognizes perspective as the great achievement of the Renaissance, yet turns back to flattening via graffiti technique. Teasers of Christian iconography enable Israeli to reflect on the status of the stain, which breaks free from the religious aura, turning to the abstract.