Avital Cnaani

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• Avital Cnaani
• Born 1978, Israel.
• Live and Work in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
• Education
• 2006 Graduate Studies Bezalel Academy of
  Arts and Design.
• 2001-2005 B.E.D (with honors) Hamidrasha School
  of Art Beit Berl College, Israel.
• Solo Exhibition
• 2004- Cabri Place of Art Kibbutz Cabri
  Gallery.
• Group Exhibition
• 2007 Relay Race Four Generation of Feminism
  in Israeli Art
• 2007 The Congress 17, Tel-Aviv
• 2006 Gordon Gallery, Tel-Aviv.
• 2005 The Scream Homage to Munch. Kav 16
  Gallery, Tel-Aviv.
• 2005 Artic 7 an America-Israel Cultural
  Foundation exhibition of the recipients of The
  Sharett scholarship.
• Awards
• 2005- Recipient of Excellency Award, Hamidrasha
  School of Art.
• 2004-5- America-Israel Cultural Foundation Awards.

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• Artist Statement
• My work is in a zone straddling drawing and
  sculpture. These are territories characterized as
  stain and lump which are in constant struggle
  with the image that is coming into existence.
• The iron sculptures are a plastic comment of the
  Israeli reality, expressing itself through the
  architectonic elements that relate to the
  landscape, and exhibit romantic and critical
  threads at the same time. While making a dialogue
  with the sculptural language of minimalism, the
  figurative body manifests itself through imprints
  of the human and physical being. The sculptures
  define the body and the landscape and create
  power relations between them at times by subtle
  action when the massive iron is handled as if
  delicately folding paper.

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• The image of the mountain is present and central
  to my projects. The representation of the
  landscape is flat - one dimensional -becoming the
  echo of itself in its sculptural existence in
  both drawings and video works. The flatness is
  looking to erase the inherent sculptural being of
  the material as volumetric mass, transforming and
  leaving it behind as a trace of a visual mass.
• The drawings are mostly made with carbon copy
  paper and ink. They describe the connections
  between reality sites and stains that threaten to
  cover them. The drawing line moves between
  intention the one that controls and copies
  and unselfconsciousness.
• In my works, I use motifs relating to power,
  jostling, territorial control and ostentation.
  These harass the observer of the artworks and
  they assign nature and the land as central
  elements of control procedures.

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• Open Space/Kassel Statement
• I'm very curious to take part and advantage of
  the opportunity of having a dialogue on art with
  artist culling from all around the world. The
  workshop gathers art creators under the umbrella
  of one of the peak ceremonies in the contemporary
  art world Documenta. This encounter offers me an
  in-depth examination of the relevance of my
  artwork at the local and global levels and these
  questions appear at an automatic and material
  level. I am also concerned with the matter of art
  criticism as it relates to the possibility of
  referring in direct ways to art history can art
  history still be a relevant cultural source of
  reference to criticism?
• Furthermore, I think about the possibility of the
  existence of these sculptural and drawing mediums
  as independent in what manner does the
  object/sculpture exist in contemporary art? Can
  it stand strong in its physical presence or does
  it exist through the material's representation as
  a photographic image? These are my questions
  -Where and how is the place of sculpture in the
  era of video and post-installation?

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