Ayelet Carmi

Curators: Asya Dublin & Yuri Katz

 The “slik” paintings installation epitomizes a project that is being created in the space, and is constructed from a bundle of works that develop into a complete sight specific work. The paintings demand to exist as one complete work that is created within the space, and takes the painting to an actual tempting realm, saturated in a crossbreeding of life and death, beauty and anxiety. The uniqueness of the installation is the fact that it is temporary, despite it being constructed from distinct timeless paintings, only when being consolidated, the installation comes to life.

Ayelet Carmi’s installation transforms the gallery space into a kind of “ex-territory” within current affairs. Amongst the works one can find the crossbreeding of sculls and plants into one major work the space of the kibbutz. The space, which is located underground, underneath the communal dining room, is woven into the open space that is an integral part of the daily Kibbutz routine, and gets treated as a hidden “secret room”, asking to tell a story of mystery as well as to raise questions about identity, history and even filled with seduction, beauty and anxiety. Moreover, one can see past figures holding various weaponry, animals tied to canons and more.

In her work, Carmi asks to invent technics, painting methods, and positioning strategies. Her attitude towards a multi-dimension space compresses into a two-dimensional one, expresses a construction that is simultaneously a collapse, a spirit that is a body, a then and a now that convey a future. Her painting evades from the traps of the “high” painting and has a funny, painful dialogue, a complex and innovative one, that has deep relationship patterns, is sensitive to nuances, times and distinct spaces. The technique she creates with, painting with oil paints upon transparent plastic sheets, fixes the crossbreeding Carmi does amidst the gentle world of sketching and the rigid image; amidst the image esthetics and the interoperation she seeks to create.

Ayelet Carmi, Born 1967, from Kibbutz Biet-Hashita, recently participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions: “A worrying man” at museum of art Ein-Harod (Curator: Galia Bar Or) “Two-thousand feet” The reformed center at Hanover, Germany (Curator: Frederika Swartz), Group exhibitions at the Tel-Aviv museum, The Janco-Dada museum and more.

Carmi, winner of the 2010 Ministry of Education’s Prize to Encourage Creativity, teaches art education at the Holon Technological institute, Beit Berl Collage, Meyerhof art education center and at the Tel-Aviv Museum.