The three components of Tsibi Geva’s large installation, which together make up a spectrum between painting and sculpture, collectively form a complete mental space. Their constituent elements are all founded on the visual and material index that Geva has formulated over five decades of artistic endeavor – keffiyehs, terrazzo floor tiles, lattices, blinds, walls of natural stone, car tires, sprayed graffiti, and more – and may be seen, by extension, as an artistic self-portrait. In Geva’s work, the collage is both a method and a value in its own right. It reflects his multilayered and simultaneous approach that combines the formal order of matter (the abstract qualities of its form in space) with the cultural order, thereby evoking multiple layers
related to the history of art, life in Israel, the cultures of the East and West, politics, society, and the artist’s personal life story. Geva's work often contains references to “vernacular architecture” – namely, architecture without architects, which grows at a given location over a period of centuries, from the local materials and its climatic and cultural needs. He recounts, “I grew up as a son of a Modernist architect, a strict aestheticist in the Bauhaus tradition, and for many years I was unaware of what that had wrought within me. Today I understand, and seek to investigate precisely what my father hated, rejected outright, and continually fought against: imperfection, aesthetic and cultural improvisation, eclecticism, political and social chaos. Today, I am drawn to the unwanted castoffs that are thrown away, like waste or as anthropological findings, and work within them.”
Curator: Aya Lurie Read more
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