Exhibition: A splash, or two, of life

Art is art is art, as Gertrude Stein may well have observed had she had occasion to adapt her definitively brass-tacks philosophical perception to visual creative endeavor. Haim Mizrahi is living and highly active proof of the cross-pollination benefits of interdisciplinary work, as was clear to all who visited his exhibition, which closed on Wednesday, at the Amiad Center near the flea market in Jaffa. Those who have yet to find their way to the venue, particularly Brits familiar with the Dr. Who TV series, may be enchanted to find that the modest front office entrance opens up to a surprisingly expansive well-lit display area. The interior dimensions suited Mizrahi's offerings to a T. There were some pretty impressively dimensioned paintings in there, but it was clear that Mizrahi was not simply trying to wow us with size. The first thing that hits you about the paintings is the unadulterated colorfulness of his creations. Many of the works tend towards a sort of pointillism aesthetic, although this is very different from the efforts of the late 19th-century purveyors of the post-Impressionist style, such as Georges Seurat. These are not diminutive distinctly different dots packed together and interacting optically. You can make out each and every one of Mizrahi's blobs of paint that appear to have been propelled there with great and unbridled gusto. There are some sumptuous Fauvist-leaning color spreads in there, too. There is also a sense of dynamism about the paintings, of some form of evolving inner dialogue, whereby the various elements communicate with – and listen to – each other, feeding off each other for the benefit of the communal bottom line. That brings to mind musical creativity and, in particular, endeavor of an improvisational nature. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that longtime East Hampton, New York, Jerusalem-born Mizrahi was a jazz drummer long before he set brush to canvas. “It all started with Rafi Ben Aharon. Everyone should know about him, He was an amazing drummer,” Mizrahi explains. “I had my first drumming lessons with him.” That was in the late 1970s, when the feted Pargod Theater was the jumping joint in Jerusalem, and where many of the national jazz scene's luminaries cut their teeth, including the likes of Mizrahi contemporaries pianist Avi Adrian, guitarist Elon Turgeman and percussionist Oren Freed. In fact, the youngster was introduced to the magic of percussive rhythm quite a few years earlier, as a student at the Alonei Yitzhak boarding school near Givat Ada, not far from Binyamina. “There was a great music room there,” Mizrahi recalls. “There was a Russian drummer there. He didn't drum, he played music on the drums there. He taught me the first rhythm and I was entranced. I wanted to get into that, to understand it and play it.” Before too long, however, Mizrahi tempered his burgeoning enthusiasm. “I realized I was never going to be a great drummer,” he reflects. “That was clear to me.” But the flow of creative ideas was not to be stemmed, it simply flowed in different directions. The plastic arts avenue of expression was preceded by the written form. “My sister wrote poetry and one day I said to her, 'What's the big deal with all this poetry stuff?' She dared me to write some poetry, and to see if it was any good.” The youngster shut himself up in his room for a while before emerging with a bunch of poems which, to her great surprise, found his sibling mightily impressed. “That's when I understood the added value of cross-implementation,” says Mizrahi. “That's when I understood the value of that for my art.” That explains all the written excerpts strategically positioned betwixt the canvases at the Amiad Center. Almost every painting is accompanied by a poem, and there is a section of the display area that is devoted entirely to poetry. THE IDEAS Mizrahi proffers in written form take some ingesting and digesting. They are not immediately comprehensible and leave you wondering what the writer was doing in there, between the wordplay folds. That may also be the case with the paintings, but there is an emotive and sensorial message in them that can be appreciated instinctively without investing too much in the way of intellectual effort. Many of the paintings strike a deep and natural chord, and you find yourself drawn to them and their gaily colorful abandonment. “If I have a problem with addressing the canvas, I solve that through writing or music,” Mizrahi notes, adding that it is an effective and rapid panacea. “That sorts everything out on the spot. If I have a problem I start writing, or go to my electronic drums.” It doesn't work the other way. “The canvas is the most challenging format,” he says. “Drums are not so challenging, nor is a blank page.” Painting may, for Mizrahi, be more daunting because of his chosen abstract line of expression. “That may be so,” he considers. “But I quickly learned that you can't get to abstract through abstract. You have to free yourself from the task of finding a topic as a precondition of creation.” It is, says Mizrahi, a matter of just going with the flow, of focusing on the matter in hand – literally – and then allowing the sluice gates to burst asunder. “You take the brush, or whatever implement you choose, and you concentrate hard on it, and on doing your best. It is like an actor focusing on make-believe. As soon as he stops concentrating on the make-believe it ends, the spell is broken.” Like all artists worth their salt, Mizrahi is constantly looking to break free of the shackles of everyday life, his own limitations and convention. “It's like in drumming, in jazz. Musicians are always looking for the one [starting beat]. Where's the one? Where's the one? they always say. But, what for? It does bad things to people.” Mizrahi adapted his paintbrush-based take on painting to his musical exploits. “I decided to research the drum set. To get into the very heart of the instrument, and to learn everything I could about it.” That wasn't so that Mizrahi could share his in-depth technical knowledge with the world per se, or become a drum builder. For Mizrahi, it is all about checks and balances. “When you take a kid and teach him to play the piano, you have to introduce him to the tradition of the piano – he has to learn the charts – for six months. Immediately after that you have to give him three months of an alternative way of addressing music. Straightaway!” The “alternative” line of tuition, Mizrahi offers, is not a matter of playing avant-garde music, rather it is a matter of technique, of adopting a drumming approach to the instrument. “The kid should play right-left, right-right-left and so on. But you don't neglect the tradition. You get back to that, and then back to the alternative way. That generates tremendous energy.” As far as Mizrahi is concerned, the same goes for painting. It comes as no surprise to learn that Mizrahi never attended art school and that he just set about his visual creative business in his own inimitable style. That was abundantly clear at the Amiad Center showing. The immediate impression is cocking a snook in the general direction of the artistic rule book, regulations and what is considered “acceptable” in terms of artistic creation. In addition to all of his other pursuits, Mizrahi has been presenting a weekly TV chat show on the local LTV television station in East Hampton. “I have carte blanche to talk about anything I want, and to invite any guest that I want,” he notes somewhat superfluously. Mizrahi always does what he wants. “I like aphorisms,” he says. “That why poetry comes easily to me.” It is also a handy weapon to have in your painting toolbox.

Exhibition: A splash, or two, of life

Artist Haim Mizrahi is constantly looking to break free of the shackles of everyday life, his own limitations and convention.

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Exhibition: A splash, or two, of life

Artist Haim Mizrahi is constantly looking to break free of the shackles of everyday life, his own limitations and convention.

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