Assaf Rahat’s new solo show “Biomorphic” opens the season at Chelouche Gallery on Thursday, September 10th 2009 at 20:00.
In his current exhibition “Biomorphic” Assaf Rahat presents rounded works in water colors and ink on plastic glue, portraying floating embryos in their small and secure aquatic space, detached from the outer world and the feminine body. Alongside these works willl be exhibited large scale works in thread and string carachterising Rahat’s previous sereis.
The materia and color of the glue works create a sensation of a deep and spacious, fluid organic substance and their transperancy allows the white wall to be containd as a coherent element of the work. Within the works occurs a soft, quite inner cercular movement. The colorfulness and expressive materiality of the embryo’s body inside the womb’s fluids alongside the placenta, stands opposed to the delicate zenic floating. A similar contrast can also be detected in the thread works: The expressive dinamic composition depicting savage war movements in a fight between two primeval apes is restrained and delimited by the bounded and interwoven threads, glued to each other.
The beginning of the work In the embryos series originates at a random encounter of the wet glue with the water colors and ink, a phase in which the artist has a limited control in the dissperssion and adhesion of the materials. Later on, as the components are drying a more controlled process is taking place. The plastic glue, which is generally concealed and functions mainly as a joining substance and not as an essence in itself, becomes a protagonist, and alike the process of turning from an embryo to a baby, the concealed is revealed.
Assaf Rahat’s dealing with the embryos in the womb continue his previous occupation with the bath tab image that can be traced in his tape, paper and thread works, also concernd with restricted surroundings of existing or ceasing to exsist. Rahat’s ongoing dialogue with the art world is discernible In the current show, with Raffi Lavie, his Israeli master, Marc Chagall and the Fauves alongside influences of handicraft and folklore.
Born 1970, Rahat is a graduate of the Midrasha School of Art in Beit Berl (1994-1998). He exhibited 7 solo shows, participated in numerous group shows, among them, Boy’s Craft at Haifa Museum of Art, and created a wall piece for the Yanko-Dada museum, Ein- Hod. Rahat’s works are created in singular, unordinary techniques using twine, sewing threads and plastic glue, industrial masking-tape, ink and water colors. His opt for unconventional materials results in expressive, disturbing and full of emotion works of art.
