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Wanderings press- release













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"Wanderings",

Janco Dada Museum, Ein-Hod, Dec 2005- Feb.2006,

Municipal Rehovot Art Gallery, March 2006 

 

 

 

 

The exhibition Wanderings deals with the autobiographical story of the artist Natalia Zourabova by touching on trivial and day-to day events in the lives of three participants, members of a small family – father, mother, and a girl who exemplify the daily routine of life in the city and in the countryside.

A number of groupings are exhibited in the exhibition – a collection of color drawings created through computer graphics, a series of acrylic on canvas paintings, and a film made from a series of computer images with the musical accompaniment of Bach suites.

Zourabova is fascinated by the swiftness of working on the computer, by the speed with which one is able to choose and play with line and color. The computer work stimulates her imagination and amazes her because of its potential for manipulation. Like many others, Zourabova is also bewitched by the computer, and it is only after she uses it to shape her painterly training, to formulate the artistic stimuli, and build the concept of whole picture that she makes the move to painting on canvas with acrylic colors. 

 

Zourabova starts the painterly act on the computer screen, which she covers with a series of lines in different shapes and sizes. The basic composition is born from within these lines, which at the touch of key, like an act of magic, are colored in a spectrum of pure and rich colors. The combination of the clean line and the almost scientific way that the color is applied creates a flattening effect that bestows a formal simplicity on the figures and landscape. This simplicity connects to the theatrical design character embedded within the works through the great attention paid by the artist to the outfits, testimony to her professional talent in the field of costume design for theatre, art, and cinema. The figure's clothes are colored in bizarre shades, and the patterned materials and the way they are put together receive special attention that creates a theatrical composition that brings to mind the style of David Hockney. 

Even though the figures and landscapes in these works are taken from reality, the choice of colors and the order in which they are applied on the support creates a surrealist picture revealing a strange world of images disconnected from their context, which gives the work the quality of a dream or hallucination. The figures seem to move between the field of the realistic and the realm of the imagination and the connections between them creates a hypnotic picturesque fantasy.

The documentation of the family's journeys follows their footsteps through many cities around the world, from their modest rooms in a provincial Israeli town, through ski resorts, a train station in Berlin, a public square in Bonn, the streets of Venice, the parks of Paris, and back to the Ramot neighborhood of Be'er Sheva. Many of the sites in these works go through a transformation, and transmit an enigmatic and threatening tone, which creates a sense of alienation and lack of basic trust.

Zourabova's works also communicate with the paintings of the American artist, Edward Hopper in their use of an everyday language to describe the little dramas of human existence. As with Hopper's figures, her figures also sit staring out of the window, reading or looking at the floor. They make no eye contact or conversation, and as with Hopper, their lives pass by in windows, on balconies, and looking out from the train.

In one of the computer drawings, Zoo 2, figures are seen waiting near a grey Berlin train station. The light green sky is full of black crows, which seem to have been extracted from Hitchcock's film The Birds that deals with people's fragility in face of the nature that they presume to govern. All the works in the exhibition surrounded by an aura of mystery, and the strong colors do not manage to overcome the gloomy atmosphere of most of them.

The series of pictures Venice 4, 8, 11 includes three works that show the family visiting Venice, yet the views in the work do not bring to mind the familiar images of Venice. The artificial coloring, the alienated figures, and the hallucinatory atmosphere make it difficult to understand the contexts in which the work was produced. In the work Venice 4, the family is seen seated around a restaurant table. The father leans over a plate of black spaghetti with a staring gaze, the mother and a baby sit next to him, but none of them make eye contact with the others. The word "Venice" written on one of the paintings hanging on the wall supplies the only clue to where they are situated. As with all the works, there is no typical characteristic of the place.

 

In the series of acrylic on canvas paintings, Zourabova creates four large format works that again present the subject of family trips – but here the place changes in each canvas. In these works Zourabova surrenders to the traditional manual technique of brush and paint. Her insistence on the touch of canvas and brush, despite the attraction of computer works, is parallel to the need of the modern author for the intimate feel of pencil on paper. However, in another reversal of processes, the traces of the computer works also accompany Zourabova when she approaches the canvas: she recreates the computer works on the canvas by creating a grid of precise lines, upon which she draws the figures and landscapes with great graphical precision. In the next stage she begins to apply the paint to the canvas, but not before she outlines each area to be painted with strips of masking tape. After the paint has dried, the masking tape is removed and precisely painted areas are revealed, whose appearance, subject matter, and style are reminiscent of the computer drawings, but with a natural texture. This Sisyphean act is Zourabova's answer to her personal artistic need to carry on a dialogue and contact with color, form, and line while the subject matter is turned into a secondary element in her work.

As in Matisse's late works, Zourabova also creates a decorative composition with a flat painterly concept, and works in an intuitive manner while selecting paint color, which occurs spontaneously during the work process rather than being the result of fore-planning.

The way in which the works are exhibited is also reminiscent of fields of cinema and photography, where the spectator fills the role of onlooker who penetrates the screen and becomes an integral part of the cinematic narrative. The story does not have a narrative continuity, and the events seem to be removed from any scenario.

The film Walking Ramot, 2005 which is screened as the last work in the exhibition is comprised of pictures of a family passing through the streets of the Ramot neighborhood of Be'er-Sheva, the landscape is barren, the streets are empty of people, a few dogs are barking at the passing procession. The colorful decorations that also appear here include everything, even the dogs. The soundtrack accompanying the film is of Bach suites, bestows upon the film a meditative, monotone, and hollow atmosphere.

 

Ora Kraus, exhibition curator

 

 

 

Translated from Hebrew by Timna Seligman