משתמש:Amir Nave Studio/טיוטה

Amir Nave (born on April 11, 1974 in Beer Sheva) is an Israeli artist.

His work deals with the question of place and the position of man regarding the place, power relations between people, temporality and violence. His works hover on the edge of the abstract. They draw from ancient myths, present various manifestations of violence and are in dialogue with the prehistory of art. Nave’s artistic language is aspired to dismantle everything unequivocal and attempting to transform culture into chaos, from which a new process of creation can emerge.

Work

Works on paper

Drawing is an attempt to create something that is born right now, not in stages. There’s something in drawing, the pressure of the pen or the pencil.

Nave developed a distinctive artistic language that combines provocative texts with highly expressive lines. The texts, drawn from the depts of consciousness, allude to internal struggles, turmoil, and a sense of persecution. [2]

For the most part, these are small-scale drawings, largely executed on wastepaper: yellowing pages torn from old books. Nave’s procedures are intended not to conceal and bury repressed materials, but rather - to deliver-secrete them via a process of lyric metamorphosis. Momentarily, hints of figuration emerge from the line-stain, as the line transforms into an appendage that bursts out from the stain, an arm that climbs along the margins of the printed text. At times, the printed lines are ‘delimited’ with a charcoal line, condemning them to function as a cage in which Nave stains/draws a figure reminiscent of a caged animal. Either way, the impression is clearly one of unconscious expression, a dark internal tangle disgorged onto the paper with minimal processing, yet the utmost poetic sensitivity. One senses a strong need to break free from the fetters of the soul and the figure’s eternal solitude in the empty space.

Nave’s figures, in addition to their solitude in the void, are modelled mercilessly and self-deprecatingly, to the point of total negation, verging on self-annulment. At other times, these abstract figures transform into an amorphous spectral image, a stain on the verge of extinction. [3]

Oil paintings

Amir Nave’s paintings are installations of body movements. These paintings portray not just the body’s movement - walking or dancing, as well as standing and sitting - but also the movement within the body, for the figure in Nave’s work is a site of separation and differentiation. It is not a pure unit, a collection of body organs converged and forged into a unified single body, but rather deployments and fragments painted in a variety of techniques and changing intensities - a fleshy stain, or thickened lines, or a single contour. [1]

One of the themes that recurs is the theme of time or times, presence vs absence and the attempt to contend with it. There are things that repeat themselves. Figures atop one another. An overall sense of a procession from nowhere to nowhere, a procession of the absurd. The interplay between the human and the bestial deals with the motivations that bind human beings together. Most of the figures relate to time in some way, they somehow observe the world, and there’s always a mutual dependency between them. People aren’t always people but hybrids… victims or leaders. The recurring motifs are symbols of individuals in society , the limitations of an individual in society. They’re motifs that represent ideals, belonging, shared destiny, commitment. The head of a dog-like or wolf-like animal represents our obedience to society , the subjugation of the individual, submission to the system, to it’s needs. A person in society is like a dog who loyally submits to his owner. The other figures are part of the same procession - the absurd march. But there’s always one distinct figure, a leader, free, a figure going the other way, questioning what’s taken for granted, the conventional, the holy, the rules, the order. He doesn’t conduct any sort of dialogue, he just does what he wants. [2]

For Nave, canvas is not merely a functional support. It defines a space where actions do not conform to the tenets of traditional painting. This is a mental space, and the canvas is vulnerable. While he works on it, the canvas is attached to the wall with staples, without a stretcher. Nave usually paints directly on it, without the ground layer with which it is traditionally covered. Consequently, his paintings include areas where the paint laid on the canvas is assimilated into it or appears on the surface as thick impasto. Nave's painting transpires in the gaps within artistic illusion, exposing the mechanism of its production and in doing so breaking it.

In modern painting reality is inserted into the fictional space of art through collage, which connects painting to the world both symbolically and in actuality; Nave, however, pastes onto the painting's surface pieces cut from his own canvases or drawings. Here, the connection between reality and fiction is disrupted. In Nave's collages it is his own image of an inner reality that is implanted into his painting, threatening to turn the nightmare into reality. These works convey a split outlook with regard to traditional painting as giving expression to one's experience of the world. In the space between the real and the symbolic, they comprise a ceaseless discussion between numerous efforts that bespeak, at one and the same time, connection and disavowal. Nave's painting is therefore formulated as a sequel to a neoexpressionist discourse, which is coupled with an aesthetic of protest expressive of melancholy and existential pain.

The male subject at the heart of Nave's work appears recurrently as a split, distorted, flawed, at times hybrid figure. He is pushed, raised, shoved - always passively. Like the painting's support, this is a vulnerable form of masculinity. Mostly, the head is hairless, a bit alien, the face expressionless, alienated, portrayed in pale, sickly purplishblue. The depicted figure is unable to find rest. Even when he wants to take a moment for himself, a ‘time out’ for a smoke, to inhale and exhale some air - albeit poisonous - an inscription above commands: Get up. A space of calm and serenity does not seem to be a viable option. [4]

Exhibitions

Nave has exhibited solo exhibitions and group exhibitions throughout Israel and abroad, including the Israel Museum (2011), Tel Aviv Museum (2016), Herzliya Museum (2016), Ashdod Museum (2013), Museum on the Seam (2010), Ramat Gan Museum of Contemporary Art (2008), Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery (2013, 2016), Galleria Continua at Les Moulins (2016), France.

His work has been shown at International Art Fairs, such as Frieze NY (2015) and FIAC (2013).

Collections

Nave’s works are included in public collections, such as The Israel Museum, Ashdod Museum of Art and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. Notable private collectors are based in Tel Aviv, New York, Mumbai, France and Germany.

Prizes and Grants

2012 ‘Mifal Hapais’, Grant for the Exhibition in Janco Dado Museum

2013 ‘Osias Hofstatter Prize’, Ashdod Museum of Art

Books and Catalogues

2016 ‘Ha-Talush’, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

2016 ‘SPHÈRES 9, Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, France

2014 ‘Nowhere’, Janco Dada Museum, Israel

2013 ‘Collection under Construction’,Ashdod Museum of Art, Ashdod, Israel

2010 ‘The Right to Protest’, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem

2009 ‘How Much Place Does a Person Need?’, Florentin 45, Space for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

2009 ‘Broaded Horizons. 120 Years of Israeli Art’, Gideon Ofrat, Jerusalem Foundation of Art

2008 ‘Remove Before Flight’, Ramat Gan Art Museum of Contemporary Art

Articles

2016 ’Caput’, Dr. Shaul Setter, article for catalog, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art [1]

2016 ’Full to Capacity’, Aya Lurie [4]

2016 ’The spirit of removing the angel of history’, Uzi Tzur, Haaretz

http://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/closeoneeye/.premium-1.2864459

2014 Amir Nave in Conversation with Meira Lehman Perry, text for the catalogue ‘Nowhere’ Janco Dada Museum [2]

2013 ’Amir Nave's Mastery’, Uzi Tzur, Haaretz, 2013

http://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/closeoneeye/.premium-1.2083966

2013 “Giving away to the automatic-ecstatic condition of life from within the punctuality of a dial-less master clock”, Haviva Pedaya

http://www.redesign.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/amirnavehavivapadia.pdf

2012 ‘Perpetual Peace’, Neve Gordon, London Review of books, June 2012

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/06/27/neve-gordon/ǝɔɐǝd-ןɐnʇǝdɹǝd/

2012 ‘Cleaning the Head’, Hila Shkolnik-Brenner, Mouse City, December

2011 ’Salvation through the Gutters’, Gideon Ofrat, text for the catalogue, published by the Ramat Gan Museum [3]

http://www.artispo.com/article.aspx?articleId=236

2011 ’Fragments of Time’, Eli Armon Azoulay, Haaretz

http://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/art/1.1475231

2010 ‘Amir Nave: To devote himself to the automatic-ecstatic state of life, out of the precision of a non-manual master clock, Prof. Haviva Pedaya

2010 ‘The Video Exhibition’ Moth Layla ": A Fan of Colors and Stones", Smadar Sheffi, Haaretz, July

Videos

A conversation between Amir Nave and Haviva Pedaya about the exhibition in Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBZx5ZNYalE

תואר ראשון רב-תחומי - כנס רוח בספיר - מושב 7 - פאנל יוצרים - שירה, מוסיקה ואמנות מהדרום https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6tG5Rr0n0&t=481s

External Links

Studio Website http://amirnave.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/studioamirnave/

START by Serge Tiroche http://www.st-art.co.il/artists/artist/137007

http://www.st-art.co.il/now/amir-nave-participates-in-spheres-9-exhibition

https://www.galleriesnow.net/shows/spheres-9/

‘Ha-Talush’, Tel Aviv Museum, 2016 http://www.tamuseum.org.il/about-the-exhibition/ha-talush

‘Introspection’, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Israel, 2016 https://www.pinterest.com/sommergallery/amir-nave-introspection/

Contemporary Asian Art at Frieze New York 2015 http://www.artasiapacific.com/Blog/ContemporaryAsianArtAtFriezeNewYork2015