viewing Portrait
Exhibition Opening: Friday, 19.10.07 at Noon
Exhibition Closing:  Friday, 13.11.07
Nona Orbach – Photography, Gad Apotecker – Painting, Tamar Bar Zahev – Painting, Noami Brikman – Painting, Menachem Mezrahi – Painting, Danny Reisner – Sculpture, Hagit Shahal – Painting, Hanna Shir – Embroidery, Drora Schpeiz – Photography
Curators: Dalia Danon, Irit Levin
Text: Nir Harmat

 “The portrait, the outward image of a human, can not be seen by himself. In daily life one sees all but its own face. In order to view his appearance, he must step out of his own skin and become a fellow man. Self-portrait image is a man’s departure from his own eye sockets, from the conception of self and into the robes of another person who therein paints the subject for the sake of the man. The inner ‘Other’ pops in the forefront of his consciousness and from the perspective of the ‘Other’ he perceives himself” (Ariel Hirschfeld, 1992)

The exhibition’s presenting artists have created impressions of facial features and in doing so view their appearance from the exterior, while positioning a mirror slanted to reflect the interior. 
The silhouette reflected from the images reveals a visual juncture between the interior and exterior self, between the conscious and the imaginary and the abstract self.
Throughout the years artists have painted portraits in an attempt to capture a notion of “truth”, whether that is for ritual need, spiritual purpose, documentation, or as a sign of social status or artistic expression.
The exhibitionbrings together nine artists, each of whom have tackled portraiture from a singular perspective and derived from a different inner position. It is as if one is attempting to gaze at a figure without the act of looking. It is an effort to treat the self as a third person in order to decode and express “self” in the most significant manner. On the other hand, portraits therefore enable the artist to express himself/herself through every man’s eyes.
An ambivalent practice exists within the presentation of the portrait; On the one hand, the portrait immortalizes the subject on canvas and ostensibly stops time, while on the other hand, the very act of immortalization or commemoration entraps the subject within a frozen, dead plane. Portrait images, much like looking in a mirror, expose time’s presence and reveal the quality of Memento Mori, “Remember your mortality”, as a symbol of time’s all consuming power.