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Seeing and reading about 'Them'
A new exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Tal Slutzker, titled "Them," opens on Thursday at the Bernard Gallery in Tel Aviv. The collection comprises works of various sizes created during 2012-14, the majority of which are self-portraits.
In the exhibition, Slutzker investigates various aspects of his own personality and emotional makeup. Some of the paintings are grand portrayals that bring out the artist's ego, while others offer a distorted image. The wide range of expressions in the works represents the image of a person who is constantly looking at himself in the mirror.
Slutzker's paintings evoke feelings of chaos and materials that disintegrate to create a visual world that defies cut-and-dried definition. The artist's frontier-bursting approach notwithstanding, Slutzker is influenced by traditional painting and maintains dialogues with contemporary works from the second half of the 20th century - such as works by Francis Bacon - up to the present day.
The artist's implements also counter convention. He paints with his shoe, sometimes with a sock in it dipped in color,...