PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
The Herzliya Biennial includes an eclectic and eccentric array of art, theater and dance productions.
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Bortolami presents its second solo exhibition of Avner Ben-Gal. Smackville draws from abstract and visual representations of the effects of opiate drugs: withdrawal, craving and usage.
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Born in 1966 in Askalon, Israel, Avner Ben-Gal lives and works in Tel-Aviv. Ben-Gal’s grim allegorical paintings and drawings alternately depict human beings as pitiful victims caught in an existential struggle within a cruel world, or as the tiny masters of their own disastrous fate. His works often represent society’s dregs and minor cast of characters, isolated within barren landscapes or rural settings ablaze. They depict scheming animals or seedy individuals surviving through shady means in dark spaces on the fringes of civic appropriateness. Veiled in large monochrome washes of acrylic paint, Ben-Gal’s apocalyptic visions enter into a larger discourse on painting and imagery, addressing the moral and political implications of representation at a time when mass media regularly disseminate and spectacularize images of war, crime and horror.
Avner Ben-Gal has had solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2009), Fabio Tiboni Contemporary Art, Bologna (2008), Sadie Coles HQ (2008), Kunstmuseum, Basel (2008), Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2007) and Bortolami Dayan, New York (2006). His work has also been shown as part of “Violence” at Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2009), “Sgozzata” at Peres Projects, Berlin (2008), “The Rear”, Herzliya Biennial (2007), “Dark” at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006) and “Clandestine”, the 50th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, (2003). He has been awarded the Rapapport Award (2008) Minister of Education and Culture Prize (1998), the Koliner award for young artists, The Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem (1996) and the Mary Fisher award for excellent young artists, Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem (1993).
Avner Ben-Gal is represented by Sadie Coles HQ, London and Bortolami, New York.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
