EYE BLINK 2015
Beth Shmuel gallery, Jerusalem
curator - Dvora Goldberger
Text - Dr. Nadine Shenkar
Judith Anis, a young artist born in the French Riviera and living today in Jerusalem, studied art at the beaux-arts association in Cannes, and then in Jerusalem ; she also studied calligraphy and the results of the French botanist Francis Halle’s research on the architectural structure of the tree and of the tropical forest vegetation.
In this impressive exhibition, very different from her previous shows, 3 different series are displayed:
The first series features acrylic paintings over large format paper, in which the vegetal element reveals its ultimate secrets, through fast, hasty brush strokes, letting gushes of grey flow through the canvas.
The second series consists of small drawings, compacted against each other, in which leaves, shrubs wave in a flow of varied, subtle shades, somewhat reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy, expressing the hidden mystery of the vegetal being, its breathing, its path, its hope.
The third and maybe most likable collection is a series of drawings, all in the same long and rectangular format; in which one, the artist froze a moment in one day, under different light conditions, in a magnificent landscape of the Judean desert.
She certainly succeeded in representing the passing moment, the fluidity of time and of objects, the endless movement of particles under the sun or in the shade, faithful to the Hebrew way, in which everything is in constant evolution, to the Hebrew language, in which the present tense does not exist, in which God himself tells Moses his name: “I’ll be who I’ll be” in an unforgettable suggestion that a statue, a frozen object, an idol constitute immobility and dogma- taboo in this fluid and flowing way of thinking.
The quality of her technique, the fineness of her sensibility, the magic in the unsaid are amazing. The eyes go astray among the lines, between the leaves, into the absence, which in fact constitutes the very essence of elements, of the matter that will always escape from us, of the electron that may be everywhere all at once.
A secret message passes through all the desert pictures, tied together by a mysterious thread, which expresses the uncertainty of things and their ultimate beauty.
Dr. Nadine Shenkar
Writer and teacher at the Bezalel beaux-arts academy, Jerusalem