New Exhibition by Rina Peleg – The Cart of My Life at Periscope Gallery, 176 Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv will open from May 24, 2025 Curated by Sari Paran.
Opening: Saturday, May 24, 2025, at 11:00 AM
Deconstruction, halted motion, and the presence of an absent body recur throughout Rina Peleg’s sculptural practice in the exhibition The Cart of My Life.
Peleg approaches her materials with confidence—both in her craftsmanship and the underlying conceptual framework. She deliberately steps away from the classical, harmonious ceramic tapestries she once created, those patiently interwoven strips that formed serene yet incomplete objects. Now, her work embraces disruption, rawness, and expressive complexity.
The artist’s perception of "wholeness" was irrevocably shattered by the events of October 7. The collapse of binaries—right and wrong, order and chaos—left in the wake of war casts a fog over the future she seeks to envision through her work. The world she knew has crumbled, and her emotional barometer reaches new extremes.
On closer inspection, the elements of Peleg’s sculptures verge on the abstract. As a metaphor for what was, she gathers ceramic shards from works created across different periods. Each fragment is treated with care, bound and woven together with slender clay bands. These bands are then layered—upon and within each other—until they form pseudo-architectural sculptural structures.
Within these fractured forms, Peleg embeds traces of memory and emotion. The resulting compositions feel wild, unrestrained, and bursting with imaginative energy. The ceramic pieces defy classical harmony, choosing instead to follow an inner rhythm of dissonance—an organic grid of forms that simultaneously construct and collapse.
This process of deconstruction and reconstruction expresses Peleg’s yearning to rebuild the world anew—like a child constructing a universe from Lego bricks. The seductive beauty of her sculptures rises from a chaotic, expressionist, and surreal terrain, reminiscent of Gaudí’s fantastical architecture.
These unruly, impossible structures have come to define the last two years of Peleg’s artistic life—a period marked by intense emotional and political entanglement. She creates and teaches at the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery, under the direction of Said Abu Shakra—a complex site where two peoples coexist and collide daily, with war looming in the background.
As Peleg’s emotions ebb and surge, so too does the viewer’s response—oscillating between fascination and discomfort. The baroque density of the compositions, at times flirting with kitsch, defies conventional hierarchies of "high" and "low," "correct" and "incorrect."
The viewer gradually senses something inherently askew within the space. What initially appears as architectural outlines of a home refuses to settle into a coherent structure. Openings and walls are misaligned, denying the logic of conventional domesticity. The longer one gazes, the more the works seem to dissolve. What lingers is a visceral, charged calligraphy—a sharp, delicate linearity that etches itself into memory.
In The Cart of My Life, Peleg lays bare the fullness and complexity of her journey—where the personal and collective intertwine. Standing in contrast is the solitary, perfect classical vessel she once crafted—now gazing in bewilderment at the wild, vivid structures around it, unable to comprehend their untamed vitality.
These trembling constructions seem precariously rooted on the edge of a volcanic crater. The unspoken question hovering above them is deeply existential: in a fractured, polarized Israel—surrounded by threats and internal discord—can we survive and rebuild from chaos, or will we splinter into irreparable fragments?
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Exhibition Hours:
Monday–Thursday: 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Friday–Saturday: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Closing Date: 14/6/2025
Pic credit: Eldad Maestro
