| Statement - January 2006 |
| Their birth was two dimensional, on library cards. She was headless, he was legless, blindfolded and white. A girl, with a round dress, hairless (after getting a head), and a masked, naked man. They lived in the city, the desert, and a castle. The power struggles between them never stop. Yet their friendship has grown over the years. |
| My narrative is consistently drawn back to these two figures and their world. They represent parts of myself but they have their own lives. They stand as symbols of the politics of Israel and of a heroic childhood structure. They have been living through my art for the last 5 years and have evolved tremendously during this time. To their tales are added chance, the nature of materials, my moods, intuition, ambition, trial and error, passion, music, memories, humor and specific moments. I wander towards creating worlds. It is a mix of sources, starting from my own personal narratives, which blend fantasy, mythology, psychology, history, music, literature, and the materials I use. I tend to jump from painting to installation. My paintings yearn toward sculpture, and my installations are very painterly. In both mediums I try to create a sense of loss for the viewer, loss of self and of physical balance. For example, in The Yellow Road installation the viewer had to enter two constructions in which the feel of balance and sense of touch, vision, smell and hearing confronted the participant in an uncomfortable and unexpected way. It demanded an awareness of the body and I tried to give it through a sour-sweet fantasy world. In the Hell painting I went back to the world of religion, where art served the purpose of the divine. The painting was hung from the ceiling, reflecting a world of violence and at the same time, of love and birth. I wanted to physically challenge the viewer who had to look up, and also create a total feeling of loss of spatial balance, falling together with the characters of the world I painted into their own hell. Since arriving in the U.S I’ve been reflecting on the political stance of my art. As a foreigner I felt forced to become a representative of my country. The new perspective of time and location allowed issues of my daily life in Israel, as well as my political point of view, to intermingle with the recurring themes in my art. The way my nationality confines me, the sense of mercurial nature of borders comes up a lot in my installations. There, I rely on a physical relationship to one’s environment and the destructive effects of its absence; I emphasis a feeling of displacement and nostalgia for home, and how archetypal mental structures are dismantled in the face of new territories. Through my art, I aim to reach a gentle point of communication with the viewer, proposing another viewpoint of life behind a mask, political or personal. |
Leat Klingman |