In Sagie Azoulay’s first solo exhibition Garage-Hole, Azoulay exhibits paintings of the recent two years that demolish and re-construct landscapes, spaces and objects anew. The documented images are charged with polarizing tension of exposure and concealment, as they relate and consider tradition, labour, ritual and secularity.
Azoulay explores architectural features and structures, and draws a formal code from detaching and stripping them of details. This reduction reveals what is hidden from the surface and uncovers the relationship and dynamics of the forms within space. In parallel, industrial images and structures in the paintings turn sacred and iconic.
The smaller scale paintings in the exhibition focus on ritual relics of buildings and civilizations, similarly to an archeological excavation. The image is concealed under layers of paint and is being revealed by carving and engraving. Azoulay seeks the sculptural dimension of the painting within the material. The use of large brushes, putty knifes (spatulas), work tools and offhand stencils allows him to recreate the concept of manual labour through the act of painting, interweaving it into the image itself, making the two inseparable.
Sagie Azoulay, (b. 1979), lives and works in Tel Aviv. He is a graduate of The Department of Fine Arts, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. Azoulay exhibited in a number of group exhibitions, and “Garage-Hole” is his first solo exhibition. Currently he is undertaking his post graduate degree at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv.
