Three artists, three questions: Perspectives on art - opinion

This month, for the “Three Artists, Three Questions” column, I have selected three very different artists: distinguished, experienced, and recently awarded as a promising artist, with education in archaeology, history, and literature, as well as experience in art teaching. Artists who, in my view, “dig” and defy definition by a single genre.

The three artists agreed to answer my three questions:

We that inspires you?

What do you call art?

What, in your opinion, makes your artwork different from that of other artists?

His practice spans sculpture, painting, video, and video games. Using various media, he aims to explore the entanglements of political violence, class struggle, and sexuality – particularly their historical, economic, and cultural inscriptions.

Reichmann has had both solo and group exhibitions in Israel and abroad; his works are also held in private collections in Israel, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Mexico. In addition, performance and dance works by him and collaborators were presented at the Intimadance Festival and the A-Genre Festival.

His latest exhibition, Defragmentation, which opened on February 5 at Tel Aviv’s Rosenfeld Gallery, caught my eye due to its non-obviousness. At first sight joyful, on a closer look it has dark messages. He presents two distinct bodies of work linked by a bodily gesture: the smile. There are sculptures of settlers’ faces (“I was an activist for many years, so I remember those faces from media and encounters,” the artist said) and a series of miniature paintings on 5-7 centimeter canvas.

My initial reaction to these miniature paintings was joy: They reminded me of illustrations from children’s books. However, a second glance also revealed their dark narrative. They are based on documentation of the John Demjanjuk trial, which Reichmann watched on television as a young boy, a memory that stayed deeply with him.

“The Nazi was dressed in a prison uniform, portly, wore thick glasses, and smiled at the camera,” he said during our interview, adding that the criminal bore a disturbing resemblance to his beloved grandfather. In this series, Reichmann combines photos from a family album with the court’s television broadcasting.

Alongside these paintings is a series of reliefs that juxtapose children’s literature and fables with grotesque nightmare imagery, from which the smiling face of “Ivan the Terrible” emerges.

Viewers cannot leave the exhibition untouched.

Inspiration: “Contradictions move me: their absurdity and their capacity for solace; of strength and sexuality that coexist with weakness and incompetence as embedded in racism, of capitalism and growth, and of societies that admire the values of the past while producing nothing that can endure. I treat these contradictions as structural pillars of my work, filtering them through my personal psyche, a space in which contradictions can coexist.

“One of my most persistent references is antiquity. I am interested in artifacts and monuments that have survived for thousands of years, stripped of their original function and left with only the residue of meaning. This residue is what transforms them from archaeological objects into artworks.”

Meaning of art: “When I applied to the Bezalel MFA program after completing a BA in history and literature at Tel Aviv University, I was asked where I see the meeting point between art and my academic background. I replied that I understand the artistic process as a form of research without footnotes or references. By this, I mean that art derives its meaning from the relationships between its internal elements and structures. This does not imply that art is detached from external sources or contexts, but that it becomes art, in my view, through the relations within itself.

“In this sense, art can hold contradictions that cannot exist outside its boundaries; it can articulate meaning without submitting to authority, history, or logic.”

Reichmann’s art: “I have consistently worked in series, a cohesive body of works developed around a shared theme.

This approach is also inspired by archaeology, where multiple objects are discovered within a single site – a temple, a villa, a grave – and the site itself defines the boundaries of interpretation. Working in series has allowed me to further explore the idea of ‘research without footnotes or references,’ enabling connections between elements that do not naturally belong together.

“[However] the cultures to which my ‘findings’ belong are not ancient civilizations but contemporary subcultures – punks, anarchists, geeks, outcasts; groups that exist outside dominant historical narratives. Through these works, I ask: What will remain of a civilization that does not want to be remembered or celebrated by future generations?”

The artist focuses on large-scale installations in which she paints on long fabric sheets supported by sculptural wooden structures. “My paintings are usually based on photographic sources; and despite their centrality, I erase parts of the original image, creating a sort of blind spot, unraveling the image,” Ilan said.

She also explained about her working process: “Through the ‘burns’ in the painting, I open a hole in it and try to unwrap the central narrative of the photograph, allowing other meanings to enter the image. In addition, the elongated format of the scroll, when it is entirely spread out or partially rolled up on the display units, enables the viewer to pivot between revealing and concealment, and the painting becomes an arena where multiple meanings are at play. It functions as a riddle, asking the viewer to believe in the very existence of what is hidden in the scroll.”

In the laudation of the Rappaport Prize, it says: “Ilan stands out not only for the distinctive painterly qualities and ambition of her installations but also for an imagery rooted in myths, archetypes, and Jewish sources.… She creates layered surfaces in which images – landscapes, ritual objects, ruins, and angels – emerge and fade. These elements imbue the act of painting with metaphysical meaning and with both spiritual and artistic force.”

Ilan has held solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and internationally. Apart from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art next year (as part of the prize), she will open her exhibition Palace at HaMifall during the Jerusalem Biennale this May.

Inspiration: “The notion that a space has aspirations is an important starting point for me in working on and planning an installation. I try to understand what kind of place this space aspires to be, what are the elements of the space’s highest potential – and, more importantly, how does my work manifest this belief in the space.”

Meaning of art: “Art studies were not my first choice. I wanted to become an archaeologist. When I entered the art world, after my experience in the archaeological field, one of the main differences I experienced was the tension between knowledge and desire.

“While in science, desire can be an obstacle to the reliability of a research work; in art, they coexist and support one another.”

Ilan’s art: “My installations often consist of paintings supported by sculptural structures. I conceive my paintings as scrolls, painted on both sides, so that their unfolding across the structures reveals only fragments of the image. The elongated format, whether fully spread or partially rolled onto the support, enables movement between revelation and concealment, so a big part of my work is actually hidden from the viewers, asking them to believe in what they can’t really perceive.

“History and archaeology play a big role in my works; however, my paintings do not attempt to provide explanations but rather create a terrain of turbulence, where multiple meanings are at play. Painting is the place where doubt and ambiguity can manifest and become an object of beauty and indulgence.”

A multidisciplinary artist born in 1950 in Jerusalem, Gabriel Klasmer divides his time between Jerusalem and London, where he moved in the 1980s.

Klasmer is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (1974 BFA, Department of Fine Arts), as well as the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London (MA, 1991, and PhD, 2005). In 1996, he represented Israel in São Paulo at the 23rd Art Biennale. For many years, he taught at Bezalel and RCA, and served as the dean of HaMidrasha faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl College (2014-2018). He is the recipient of various awards, such as the Minister of Education and Culture Prize for Painting and Sculpture (1989), and the Moses Lifetime Achievement Award (2022).

His works can be found in various collections and have been exhibited in many group and solo art shows, such as at the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Klasmer’s art demonstrates an ongoing exploration of color, line, and painterly gesture. He merges mechanized processes with traditional techniques that he developed. “By restricting the motion of the hand to vertical/horizontal vectors, simulating the principle of a mechanical device or a mechanical arm, I moved myself to become more mechanical than human,” he said.

Klasmer related that it was once his dream that a viewer would come to his exhibition and would think there were works of several different artists. He has been creating abstract paintings but had an “affair” with figurative art, too.

“I am 75 years old; you will have a problem with me,” he said with a smile. Meaning, his work cannot be defined by one genre.

A selection of his work, from different periods of his career, is now on view at Tollman’s House in Bnei Brak, in a joint project of the Fresh Paint Group and Givon Art Gallery.

Inspiration: “I am a very visual person: I get excited by what I look at. Ideas inspire me, some within the art world (its deep history up to its current activities).

“Inspiration is a bit of a romantic concept for the way I work. It starts from a blank canvas (this is my challenge). I do not hold ideas of what will happen next, so in a way I am inspired by the events that present themselves to me on that surface, and I respond to them.

“Creative minds and breakthroughs excite me [too]. In any field of knowledge (in a way, I’m a Modernist – where the new is perceived as progress), it can be in the shape of an object, in a new material or technology (for example, 3D printers), in a revolutionary way something is made, or above all, the thinking involved. In short, I am open to creative critical thinking.”

Meaning of art: “Almost anything that the artist considers to be art. Anything that has a useful function is probably not art.

“[Regarding] painting, it can be looked at from the point of view of its execution, of the process of making it.

“The act of painting is a narrative of motions and movements, of the brush, of the hand, leaving its traces on a surface (canvas). It is this motion of the mythologized ‘hand of the artist’ that tells us this story (of painting). The finished painting contains this ‘data’ and is, in many ways, the record of all the motions that were done on the way to its completion.”

Klasmer’s art: “It’s hard for an artist to brag about his significance without being arrogant. The choices of my artwork I make are very open-minded and not motivated by self-expression but rather by curiosity to experiment, question about the medium, the context, the way things are made, allowing the emotions to seep through the back door.

“In that sense, I do not have a style one can identify me with but rather the variety of engagements, which becomes more and more common these days, as many artists are described as multi-disciplinary, and this is how you operate – painting, making sculptures, video installations, and more.”