• In her solo exhibition Alma Itzhaky shows a new series of large-scale works on paper in a wide format -...
    In her solo exhibition Alma Itzhaky shows a new series of large-scale works on paper in a wide format - “scrolls” - alongside smaller drawings accompanying the work-process. The series was created with landscape and vegetation images in mind, focusing on the seam between the human environment and nature. It continues Itzhaky's interest in fallow fields and desolate areas as the "degree zero" of the landscape, a landscape which has no prominent or unique features but is all "dead space," an intermediate zone dotted with minor events. The works are created on the floor, kneeling on all fours and crawling across the paper, so the complete image is only revealed in hindsight. The large scale and changing directionality - up and down, vertical and horizontal, near and far - creates an image that must be taken in strides or read like a text, in connection to the Chinese and Japanese tradition of scroll paintings.
     
    The world created in the scrolls similarly evokes a sense of a changing scale, of movement from the micro to the macro, from the inside of the body to the outside, from soaring to diving. The paintings are based on the metaphor of metabolism: materials changing state in the exchange between the body and its surroundings, between one body and another, between living and dead matter. The landscape and the body mix into a series of textures - dirt, skin, weeds, hair, scars, mud, and fluids - created by the repulsion between the oily pastel and liquid watercolors. From these textures, images emerge: animals feeding on a corpse, boars rummaging through trash, a woman urinating in a stream, pupae resting in the mud, and more. these images call to mind dissolving, fluid bodies, assimilating into a world where everything is alive and therefore everything also dies, decays and rot.
  • Alma Itzhaky, Pupae 2024, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery / Tel Aviv (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Pupae 2024, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery / Tel Aviv (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Pupae 2024, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery / Tel Aviv (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Pupae 2024, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery / Tel Aviv (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Alma Itzhaky, Pupae 2024, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery / Tel Aviv

    • Alma Itzhaky , Cocoons, 2023
      Alma Itzhaky , Cocoons, 2023
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    • Alma Itzhaky , Decomposition, 2023
      Alma Itzhaky , Decomposition, 2023
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  • Alma Itzhaky born 1984, Tel Aviv. Lives and works in Berlin. Itzhaky’s work is embedded in the tradition of figurative...
    Alma Itzhaky
    Rummage, 2023
    oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper
    150 x 750 cm
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    Alma Itzhaky born 1984, Tel Aviv. Lives and works in Berlin.

    Itzhaky’s work is embedded in the tradition of figurative painting, and strives to relate this tradition to an Israeli context and find new ways of using painting as a viable medium for addressing contemporary reality. Her large-scale paintings depict social scenes and moments of encounter, set in the urban surroundings of Tel Aviv – Jaffa. These encounters are violent as much as they are erotic and blissful, always undulating between the two possibilities. They touch on the aggressive potential latent in every group situation, but also on sentiments of solidarity and identification.

     

  • Alma Itzhaky, Rummage, detail, 2023, oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper, 150 x 750 cm, unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Rummage, detail, 2023, oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper, 150 x 750 cm, unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Rummage, detail, 2023, oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper, 150 x 750 cm, unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Rummage, detail, 2023, oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper, 150 x 750 cm, unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Alma Itzhaky, Rummage, detail, 2023, oil pastel, aquarelle and cyanotype on paper, 150 x 750 cm, unique

  • Alongside her work as an artist, Itzhaky is a researcher in both political and art philosophy. Her PhD dissertation discusses...
    Alma Itzhaky
    The Hoopoe, 2023
    oil pastel and aquarelle on paper
    150 x 130 cm
    unique
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    Alongside her work as an artist, Itzhaky is a researcher in both political and art philosophy. Her PhD dissertation discusses political action in contemporary art in light of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of action. She is currently a Minerva Fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, where she explores environmental imaginaries in Palestinian and Israeli art – the engagement between contemporary art and collective perceptions of  the local environment and its history.
    Itzhaky has won major prizes, including the Rappaport Prize for a Young Artist (2014), and the Osnat Mozes Painting Prize (2012).  She has had three solo exhibition, most recently at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2015). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions and is included in major public and private collections, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art collection. Itzhaky has also participated in international workshops and residencies, including the Bronner Residency (Düsseldorf, 2012), and the NARS Foundation Residency (NYC, 2016).
  • Alma Itzhaky , Flowing, and Flown, 2023

    Alma Itzhaky

    Flowing, and Flown, 2023
    oil pastel on paper
    150 x 578 cm
    unique
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  • Alma Itzhaky, Flowing, and Flown, detail, 2023, oil pastel on paper, 150 x 578 cm , unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Flowing, and Flown, detail, 2023, oil pastel on paper, 150 x 578 cm , unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Flowing, and Flown, detail, 2023, oil pastel on paper, 150 x 578 cm , unique (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Alma Itzhaky, Flowing, and Flown, detail, 2023, oil pastel on paper, 150 x 578 cm , unique
    • Alma Itzhaky , Rags, 2023
      Alma Itzhaky , Rags, 2023
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    • Alma Itzhaky, Thawing Clay, 2023
      Alma Itzhaky, Thawing Clay, 2023
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  •
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel on paper
      30 x 40 cm
      unique
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel and cyanotype on paper
      40 x 30 cm
      unique
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel on paper
      29 x 21 cm
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel on paper
      30 x 40 cm
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel on paper
      29 x 21 cm
    • Alma Itzhaky , Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel and cyanotype on paper
      40 x 30 cm
    • Alma Itzhaky, Untitled, 2023

      Alma Itzhaky

      Untitled, 2023
      oil pastel on paper
      42 x 30 cm
      unique