Tal Mazliach
Tal Mazliach's (born 1961, Israel) paintings constitute enigmatic hieroglyphs that the viewer is required to decode. Camouflaged beneath the colorful, seductive, almost blinding surfaces is a plethora of images, figures, symbols, sentences, and words, which come together to form a complex, overflowing painterly and emotional world. A prolonged, in-depth examination of these works reveals their intricate layering while exposing a growing number of additional details that coalesce into a pulsating expanse – which demands of the viewer to modulate the resolution of his gaze. The paintings are imbued with a constant tension between revelation and concealment, between the fragment and the whole, naiveté, and self-awareness, and between a range of interconnected themes.
Although the works urge us to attentively examine the hints embedded within the painterly support, they seem to simultaneously eschew any attempt at decoding, and even resist it – doing everything in their power to detect the act of interpretation. The paintings repeatedly express their refusal to be analyzed publicly or in writing, at times explicitly demanding not to be interpreted (see, for instance, the 2007 painting that contains the sentence "Erasing the explanatory text"). The writing of any interpretive text about Tal Mazliach's works – including this essay – thus constitutes an ambivalent action – at once in support of the paintings and against them. The attempt to shed light on each painting, to carefully study every one of its layers, and to reveal the rich world and profound experience it offers the viewer is, in this case, simultaneously an act of treason.
Written by Efrat Livny
