Culture
"Flying" – Hanna Ben Eliezer Curtis – Solo Exhibition at Global Art Gallery, tel aviv
The solo exhibition of Hanna Ben Eliezer Curtis is an ode to the art of collage. It is an artistic style that revolutionized modern art as part of the 20th-century Cubism movement.
It was Picasso and Braque who first coined the term "collage," derived from the French verb coller, meaning "to glue." Picasso and Braque challenged the conventional notion that art should be created from scratch and from traditional artistic materials.
They began incorporating newspaper
clippings, sheet music fragments, fabric scraps, and everyday objects like
cigarette wrappers and playing cards into their groundbreaking works. These
collage elements added texture, depth, and conceptual richness to the art.
Later, Henri Matisse created his legendary collage series, which presented a
revolutionary aesthetic of texture, colour, and a new world of images that
expressed freedom and defiance toward traditional art. Throughout the 20th and
21st centuries, collage has been integrated into many art movements and
contemporary culture, but David Hockney is the contemporary artist who inspires
and is most beloved by Hanna Ben Eliezer Curtis. "I love the crazy and
fascinating colours in his works. The colour combinations and the multitude of
perspectives."
Hanna Ben Eliezer Curtis has always
worked with all types of art, painting in all its forms and later in mosaic.
"Towards the end of my husband's life, when he was in the hospital, I had
an epiphany. I understood that I wanted to replace the small mosaic stones with
newspaper clippings. I want to take something perfect and final, like a glossy
magazine, a tempting fashion magazine, or a nature magazine, tear it apart, and
create something equally perfect but new." The message in the magnificent
collage works before us is in the process of creation. There is no social
critique, no protest, and no creation ex nihilo. The essence of the creation is
in the process itself: the choice, the cutting, and the gluing. The materials
used for the work have a distinct prior background, with a clear conceptual
charge, and from them, something new is created. In the creation of the
collage, there is a process that is similar in essence to the philosophical
view of the Japanese Kintsugi art (Kintsugi = gold, and tsugi = connection).
That is, connecting with gold or a golden connection. It is an art that heals
ceramic vessels and sees in their breakage and repair an opportunity to create
a whole made from fragments, which is no less valuable than the original.
According to the Zen masters, one should carefully collect the broken pieces,
reassemble them, and at the end of the process, emphasize the cracks with rich
gold powder, giving the breakage beauty and strength that highlight the vital
value of the fragments. Hanna says, "This is a metaphor for my life."
Artist Hanna Ben Eliezer Curtis takes
the fragments of her life, the shards of her existence, and reassembles them
into stunning works of art, in their colourfulness and vitality. The ideal
behind her creation is the desire to bring joy, to do good for people, and to
create a colourful and happy world where the tears are visible and emphasized
yet are still beautiful and moving. Hanna's desire is to fill the world with
beauty, with aesthetics. With memories of beautiful lace fabrics, fragments
from pictures of stunning furniture, impressive buildings, porcelain dishes,
fragments of images of beautiful women's clothing, and fragments of images of
natural landscapes. These are fragments of perfect aesthetic beauty that have
torn apart and been reassembled into a new creation, which is no less beautiful
than the original. "In the creative process, I do not plan connections; I
surrender to a completely associative process. I take the fragments and use
them as colour. I connect the fragments and create a misleading sense of
acrylic paint on fabric. I paint with collage. I look for the connections
between the fragments and then understand where I am going. The creation comes
from within me without prior planning. It is a burst of colour and emotions.
And I always have the option to add another layer, and another layer. Here,
there is a gaze that looks outward while simultaneously looking inward. And
here, there is a process that leads to chaos, which eventually converges into
internal order and calm. I create with great freedom. I glorify the past and
create something new from it. I want to make the viewer enjoy, see the beauty
of the colours, feel the textures of the fabric, and feel serenity, tranquillity,
and breathe. I want to create the song of aesthetics and beauty."
Dr. Galia Duchin Arieli
Global Art Gallery
Merkaz Baaley Melacha 13 Tel Aviv.
Until – 19/4/25
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