About Hagit's recent works

In recent years, Hagit Shahal has been drawing ornaments based on parts and segments of authentic oriental carpets.

But carpets are not the object of the work as items of historic and geographic value. The particular choosing of carpets has to do with the order, the harmony and the symmetry they contain - in fact, with the wish to interrupt these very order and harmony.

Hagit Shahal stretches boundaries, re-shapes territories, puts down new border-lines and deals with other concepts such as the breaking of rules, rhythm, domination, coexistence, etc.

In the 70' and early 80', the artist's works have been minimalistic in the extreme and were characterized by summarization and elimination. Today, her works seem to be in total contrast to the former ones - but the process is, in fact, the same: superabundance becomes the rhythm of and the background for a new happening.

It is, in fact, the same thing in a new form. The things that changed were the means of the craft : brushes, paints and canvasses.

Today, as opposed to the leanness of materials in her works back then, the elements that she is using are vibrant, vivacious, juicy and without restraint.

Hagit Shahal has been dealing with carpet ornaments for years, and is getting deeper and deeper into the concept. "Each painting that I complete," she says, "already contains budding ideas for future works."

The artist explains: "This is a little like Jazz music. When you play a 'standard', as they call it in Jazz, the point isn't to play the original melody but to improvise upon it, and each improvisation is actually a new creation. It is the same for me: the carpet itself is the 'standard', which I interpret and from which my new creations arise."

About the exhibition at Sarah Erman gallery, 2000