Gideon Rubin

About

For his new exhibition at ROKEBY Gideon Rubin presents an installation of brand new work, comprising of some seventy or more paintings. Gideon Rubin is fascinated by the course of time; in the new series of paintings the artist has used a found photograph album from the 1920's as his source material. Rubin selects figures and scenes from these amateur and often banal snapshots that have some sort of discernible narrative but one that is open to conjecture. Installed together and independently the paintings hint at numerous narratives and histories offering no definitive reading or insight into the selected characters. The figures and scenes move in and out of the picture plane and are embedded within layers of paint; the surface of the paintings revealing strata of previous paintings and scenes. As if entrenched in multiple histories the artist asks what it means to paint and to transplant people and objects into his selected medium. Rubin exaggerates the fact that the figures in his paintings are impossible to directly identify with, both physically and historically, rather, he offers the viewer overlapping and competing temporalities. Often any facial features or details are effaced and in so doing Rubin not only instills his characters and scenes with multiple potential narratives but also reveals the inadequacies of painting. In bringing paintings representational possibilities and its self-reflective qualities within reach of each other Rubin asks the viewer to consider the act of painting and its legacy. In his paintings and through the exploration of his selected medium the artist implies that our current experience is defined by unresolved histories; he exposes and offers multiple possibilities and moments of latent potential. Gideon Rubin was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and lives in London. Following four years at the School of Visual Arts in New York he continued his education at the Slade, London graduating in 2002. This is Gideon Rubin's second solo exhibition at the gallery. His work is currently included in Family Traces at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. He has had numerous international solo exhibitions and his work is included in important private collection worldwide.