Other Animals | Gil Shachar

June 16th - July 29th, 2022

From early on in his artistic practice, Gil Shachar’s work has possessed a tension between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, between the surfaces of the objects vs. their content, between painting and sculpture. This tension is expressed in different ways in the works themselves and is often reflected in the exhibition's spacial organization, through installations combining wall works as well as free-standing works, each demanding our full attention.

In the current exhibition at the Alon Segev Gallery, solely wall works are displayed, a selection of epoxy castings depicting paper, created parallel to Shachar's main project of recent years- The Cast Whale Project.

In these new works, many of Shachar’s themes and characteristics are swirled; the preoccupation with illusion, the relationship between nature and culture, questions about copying, invention, and the concept of "imagination," the ambivalence between the abstract and the figurative, and the tension between rigidity and delicacy. At the center of the exhibition is the "Origami" series, composed mainly of animal images in flattened paper folds. Through this simple and minimal gesture, in this body of wall works these characteristics of Shachar’s work reach their subtle climax.

These works possess characteristics of relief - the missing link between painting and sculpture, a minor medium, through which Shachar tightens his images and corresponds with the spirits of his artistic ancestors and other animals.

© Gil Shachar. Photography: Elad Sarig