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The Bathers and Eyal Sasson’s System of Painting
During the last fifteen years, after graduating from Bezalel and later from London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), the painter Eyal Sasson has dedicated his work to a
deconstruction of the visual image. In each series of his paintings, Sasson has put
together a set of principles he then employed for carrying out this task, also the labor of constructing the painting at the same time. In that vein, Sasson has broken down images of forests into their respective red, green and blue (R.G.B) pixels, and confined their natural wildness to the rules of digital photography; created stratified paintings by applying subsequent thin layers of acrylic paint which adds physical depth as well as materialistic memory to the flat exposed image; distorted
landscapes and views by using the principles of Camera Obscura and anamorphous technique, so to undermine the impressionistic manners of the illusionary painting; and used “black mirror” (also known as Claude Glass named after artist Claude Lorraine) to paint black, nocturnal, sceneries, where the gaze is demanded to make an effort in order to put together an image whose only bright parts are seen vaguely.
In his oeuvre’s current episode, Sasson returns to “The Bathers” – one of the most central themes in art history. Furthermore, the Moderna has given a significant role to the bathers, within which they were chosen to serve as the (classic and familiar)
platform for developing painterly languages, artistic approaches and revolutionary
cultural theories. Yet, Sasson’s work does neither revere a modern ideal which aims to obtain essences through painterly systems taken towards the bathers, nor suggests a post-modern strategy designated to undermine essences or ideas.
Instead, Sasson’s painting is self-reflective, and as such, it is solely responsible to raise its rationale from within, as well as to align with its own doctrine’s principles.
In the past, Sasson’s painting practice was conducted under an analytic set of rules, as in the example of reduction to R.G.B. colors, or anamorphic deformation. Now on the other hand, we are presented with a series of paintings whose principles are less rationalistic and more fluidic, let alone watery and aquatic. The present painterly system, if then, is dictated by the bathers themselves, and they, from their part, are asking to dip, dive, bathe, wash, to be reflected, take the form of water, to blend in. In this current example, the bather is an agent of a watery painting system which may
bring up questions such as: what occurs when a bather leaps into a bluish spot? How is it possible to hop over a green colored field upon purple rocks? And what if the colors of the sky, colors of man and earth, and colors of water, would suddenly switch roles? Can a pond be yellow? How a bather is painted and alternately, how is
a painting “bathed” – meaning, how will a painting, when placed in a watery system, behave? And in the broader sense: how does human nature fit in nature?
In his last solo exhibition, not only continues Sasson’s formalistic engagement in the
language of painting including the formal challenges with which he chooses to confront, but also expresses the connection between man and nature – a subject which runs like a thread throughout his entire oeuvre. In particular, Sasson primarily
relates the alienation surrounding man in nature, the estrangement of man observing
nature, and at the end of the day, Sasson uncovers the distance which prevails any
sense of belonging between the two. Furthermore, there is not a single image of the sun found in this exhibition, yet Sasson has chosen to title it “Deceiving Sun”, particularly in this context of man and nature relations – referring the sun as having a human characteristic: a “deceiving” sun that does not spread heat, amidst “deceiving” bathers who allegedly enjoy staying around nature, under the sun, a lying sun.
Ron Bartos, 2015
Armpit Garden
Eyal Sasson
"Armpit Garden"; Eyal Sasson&'s exhibition, resembles a painting installation whose limbs have been blown up to gigantic proportions and out of control, dominating all the walls of the exhibition space. It consists of large-scale paintings, raging, gliding, and bleeding, that break through the edges of the square format, and undermine the
familiar boundaries of the painting medium. Together, they combine to create a model of disturbed nature; a blooming garden that overflows almost to the point of decay, in which liquid and fleshy bodily elements are mixed and create gaping, predatory plant monsters. Sasson creates surreal hybrids between enlarged and
inflated elements that isolate him from nature and the body's limbs and fluids. The result is physical and mental landscapes full of effusions or outpourings of color- which, in his opinion, correspond to the eruptions of foliage or blossoms, or to the
gushing of some spring – that raise reflections on the wear and tear of the body and
its collapse.
Sasson’s painting is reflective, referring to himself. He does not seek to represent parts of reality, but to build a fantastic and emotional world that does not pretend to
imitate any landscape. In this exhibition, he breaks not only the boundaries between inside and outside and between nature and the body, but also its conventions and the limits of the contemporary painting medium, within which he has been working for about twenty years. With the virtuosity of a skilled painter, Sasson creates a system of disguises and gaps: under a veil of external beauty and saturated and toxic color, which appears to be playful in the offensive, parts of the painting are full of effusions and intentionally ugly. The exhibition's cheerful and deceptive appearance seems to conceal a pain that comes with the disillusionment of dreams and hopes. Sasson paints from a sense of satiety and excess, almost vomiting, and thus puts the aesthetic values by which he operates as a painter under renewed scrutiny. Like the
tongues of paint that defiantly extend from the wall, Sassoon seems to be cutting a tongue and seeking to challenge accepted concepts of beauty, the status of painting, and his own place as a painter in the art world.
Curator
Ravit Harari
A Door Opens, A Howl
Eyal Sasson
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.
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