1 “A Door Opens, A howl”  , Acrylic on paper cutout and wall paint, installation  view, 2019

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2-6 Part of the installation view, 2019

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7 Untitled, acrylic on paper, 80x120 cm, 2018

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8 Untitled, acrylic on paper, 80x120 cm, 2018

 

9 Untitled, acrylic on paper, 80x120 cm, 2018

 

10 Untitled, acrylic on paper, 80x120 cm, 2018

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11 Untitled, acrylic on paper, 80x120 cm, 2018

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A Door Opens, A Howl
Eyal Sasson

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Eyal Sasson's new painting exhibition is actually an all-encompassing painting installation that dominates all the walls of the exhibition space, and combines two-dimensional and three-
dimensional painting fragments.

These come together to create a kind of model of a landscape or
of disturbed nature, a blooming garden overflowing, in which liquid and fleshy physical elements have been mixed.

The long walks that Sasson enjoys taking in nature also served as a starting point

for the artist's last solo exhibition (quot;Deceiving Sun", 2015), in which he presented two-dimensional
paintings inspired by
his travels. In this exhibition, he breaks through the edges of the square painting, thereby undermining the familiar boundaries of the medium, and sends shapes, lines, and bright spots of color directly onto the gallery walls, which become the painting's substrate. With bold and bright colors that draw inspiration from classic Japanese prints and contemporary
animation, he creates surreal hybrids between elements of nature and the human body on one
hand and between the domestic and the wild on the other.

In his paintings, the person is not just an external observer of nature, but seeks to merge
with it. The result is physical and mentallandscapes full of spills, fluids, and springs that, for him, are equivalent to the eruptions of foliageor blossoms  r the gushing of some spring, which also offer a reflection on the wear and tear and collapse of the aging human body.

 

The elements of the installation were all drawn on cut-out pieces of paper. Some were cut
from failed paintings, some were drawn in advance as independent elements; some were
constructed as three-dimensional shapes using paper folding, and bring to mind playful pop-up
books associated with the world of childhood. Sometimes the act of cutting a line or a spot of color is like a brushstroke, a purely pictorial act. All parts of the painting were created from the perspective of a painter: these are paintings that have become objects, carving organs from the
gallery walls. Sasson prepares for himself a reservoir of playing blocks of different sizes, shapes, and

colors, with which he seeks to build a fantastic world that does not pretend to imitate any
landscape. In doing so, he breaks not only the boundaries between the inside and the outside and between nature and the body, but also its conventions and the boundaries of the contemporary
painting medium, within which he has been working for about twenty years. With the virtuosity of a skilled painter, Sassoon creates a system of disguises and gaps: under the veil of external beauty
and meticulous aesthetics, under the saturated coloration that appears cheerfully offensive,
deliberately ugly parts of the painting are injured and filled with fluid that appear to be body parts melted into each other, like a bleeding heart that appears partly rustic because partly like a gaping
wound. Like a drunkard overflowing and filling the space with joy on the verge of collapse, the cheerful and deceptive appearance of the exhibition seems to be modest about the pain associated
with disillusionment from dreams and hopes, and reflections on the collapse of the body.

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The name of the exhibition "A Door Opens, A Howl" has something to do with the morning routine. Opening a door out into the world, to the cat that howls and demands its meal. The howling with which the morning begins, which accompanies the opening of the door to the world, is like a daily scratch, a growl or a disturbance that accompanies the routine of life. Sassoon is
concerned not only with the dismantling of the pictorial image as a way of constructing painting (an issue that has accompanied him since the beginning of his artistic career), but also with questions
related to breaking the routine of life, and within it - the routine of painting. Sasson challenges accepted perceptions of beauty, the status of painting, and its place in the art world.

 

Curator
Ravit Harari

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