Liat Yossifor
"falling into ends"
"falling into ends"
June 10 - August 28, 2010
Yossifor's new series of paintings, falling into ends, closes the distance between the past and the present thoughts on past ideas. The new paintings ignore linearity; instead they awaken events, gestures, and conflicts that shaped the present, asking to reopen the story-telling part of history and the generalization of non-identical things. In her paintings, symbols, images, and stories associated with the construction of history are up for debate. By using an old medium to paint archaic ideas (such as national monuments and soldiers), a conversation about painting and construction of history is echoed back and forth between the paint and what it depicts. If what is painted can be argued to be abstract and openended because of the nature of painting (even if figurative and referential information in painting ultimately breaks into abstract shapes and forms), then what happens to historical information inside of the language of painting? What happens to symbols inside the language of painting? These works build on an argument about the medium of painting, which is that painting opens and expands socio-political subject matter. It abstracts the subject's meaning by the fact that what is painted is already transformed into an open shape.
The references for falling into ends are archetypes. For this project, Yossifor collected images of statue-like national monuments (including soldiers from various wars) and of paintings of soldiers (specifically post war German painting). She treats the images as equal documents, derived from documentary, nationalistic, and artistic perspectives.
The national monuments as symbols hover above all the other symbols that are dealt within this work. Monumental forms are, at times, ironic and strangely effective. In these paintings, monumental forms are formed as a series of failed accounts and ambiguous narratives, and they become about feelings associated with stories already told. Painting attaches itself to these forms, nostalgic and broken as well.
The soldiers as archetypes are painted freely, in the sense that their medallions, uniforms, hats, and flags are a mixture of various styles and origins. They are, on the one hand, in a confused state due to them being composed from multiple references; and, on the other hand, they are a universal and clear symbol of a nation. These characters are also painted as pathetic and absurd forms. They make up a mass of bodies, they share a language, and they melt into each other. They melt together for the sake of the overall shape of the painting, forcing their shapes into a more overwhelming graphic shape that is the structure of the painting. They seem to be celebrating an end of a war, or its beginning; moreover, they seem to be gathering but it is not clear for what. Their state of becoming "one" is heroic and pathetic at once.
Yossifor grew up in Israel, and while her work is not only tied to this one aspect of her identity, it is filled with questions about nation, violence, history, and political positions for which the triggers are personal and autobiographical.
Yossifor has shown her work in solo exhibitions at various venues, such as: "The Tender Among Us" at the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; "The Dawning of an Aspect" at Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, LA, CA; "The Black Paintings" at Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; and "New Paintings" at Anna Helwing Galley, LA, CA. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT; Museum of Modern Fine Arts, Minsk, Belarus; The Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; and the New Wight Gallery at UCLA, LA.
Currently, she is attending the Frankfurter Kunstverein residency program, and will be showing solo in 2010 at Anita Beckers Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany, and at Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, US.
Image:
Liat Yossifor
The Monument, 2010
Oil on linen, 180 x 160 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt
Galerie Anita Beckers
Frankenallee 74
60327 Frankfurt
T +49 69 739 009 - 67
E info @ galerie-beckers.de
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