15 February 2005

Ariel Schlesinger

February 17 - March 26, 2005
Opening: Thursday February 17, 2005 at 20:00

Dvir Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of the first solo show by the artist Ariel Schlesinger.

In 2003, at the Bezalel graduation show, Schlesinger trapped an outsized inflated white bear under a lowered ceiling. At the Gordon Gallery [Tel Aviv] he presented recently a group of small kinetic constructions - three-dimensional drawings, if you like, made out of thin metal wires. The movement of these non-functional mechanical objects gave the impression of an on-going, repetitive rhythm in space. In general, Schlesinger’s work seems to oscillate between the material and the verbal [eg. The Great Bear…]. His objects retain mimetic qualities and are full of freshness and wittiness. They belong at one and the same time to the discipline of sculpture as well as to that of design.

The current show at Dvir is the young artist’s poetic homage to his late grandfather. The scattered objects that are installed around a central architectonic element [a tilted plaster wall], compose sculptural phrases that bring up the idea of the old, the obsolete and the rusty. In a similar fashion to the Wabi/Sabi Japanese aesthetics, in which Schlesinger finds a great interest, however, he manages successfully to intertwine the faded and the outmoded with the new and the fresh, in an intimate formulation of sculptural language.

Schlesinger [b.1980, Israel] graduated with honors from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design [Jerusalem], in 2003. In 2002, as part of Bezalel’s Students’ Exchange Program Schlesinger resided for a period of six months in NYC as he studied at the School of Visual Arts there.

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