י' (Yod) | Ishai Shapira Kalter | Solo show

About

י' (Yod) marks a turning point for the artist, who in recent years created works that would predominantly be attributed to institutional critique. These works were research-based, and emphasized criticality, knowledge and political agendas.  While still following an astute and intricate conceptual practice, the current show is focused more on questions associated with the gaze through looking at painting as an object.

The exhibition includes a number of series of works, all of which bare monochromatic and non-figurative images – aesthetic arrangements that could be ascribed to geometric abstraction, Conceptual art, Minimalism and Arte Povera. Shapira Kalter's works are hybrids of fabric and construction, surfaces and pigments, sculptures and hanging apparatuses. They are made of distinctively local materials, such as tar, grease, tarpaulin, sunshades, polycarbonate, galvanized steel and Yod (Povidone iodine) - the medical solution as well as the 10th letter in the Hebrew alphabet.

Most of these industrial materials were developed or employed by Israeli military industry, but they are also used by civilians for disinfection and sealing of structural and corporal lesions and apertures. These are materials we use to protect and shelter ourselves from the extreme local weather conditions (heavy heat, humidity, salinity, and infection). The Israeli sun, with its blinding and scorching UV radiation, is marked in this exhibition by materials that were devised to reduce its disturbance. They make up resilient surfaces that are constantly exposed to direct contact with the sunlight.

Throughout his artistic process, the artist stretches, screws, stitches, binds, smears, wipes, pours, marks, and splashes these materials, testing their capabilities and response mechanisms. The attachment of the works to hanging apparatuses grants them modularity and opens up various possibilities of visual and corporal interaction between the works and the viewer. י' (Yod) also evokes the subjects of hybridity, landscape, and self-portrait.