Wild Angels-Catalog-small-with-cover

W i l d A n g e l s One might define your works as standing between nature and culture. Your flowers are artificially “planted” and interwoven into the wings, conveying something hybrid that is simultaneously unfamiliar and well-known. The paintings seem to go through a process of liberation: in the earliest ones, the winged figure is sharp and clear, the narrative is comprehensible, and the language is understandable. As the process advances, they seem to come loose and gradually become amorphic and free. In some of the pictures, the human figure seems to have evaporated, leaving behind wings fluttering in the air, liquescent or molten, joining the watery material of the sky above them ( Uplift #21 , see catalogue, p. 38). The wings catch the eye, inviting viewers to look deep into the focus of the cross perspective, where the diagonal bridge (or is it a rainbow?) is an invitation to float in the air, but is also a barrier, as it plants the angel’s head in the amorphic white soil. The wings have turned abstract, as they whirl like a windstorm. They convey motion and dynamicity, dizziness and flight, like musical emanations that cause the air to vibrate. You have correctly described the process so well. This was an attempt to join those figures in their flight, while also pointing to the ground they stand on, or to the bridge. The real bridge turns into an image hanging by a thread between the sky and the earth. These angels are not in the sky; perhaps they only indicate a flight potential. They succumb to gravitation. Your mention of sound vibrations is interesting, since angels are associated with singing in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. In the catalogue of Tamara Rikman’s exhibition Angels , Ariel Hirschfeld wrote: “The angels are not made of light or spirit. Had they been made of light, they would not have needed wings. The wings remind us that theirs is a flesh and blood body that has volume and weight, and needs giant wings to rise in the air. [...] The combination between animal body organs and the human body in a culture is a main element of the mode known as ‘grotesque’ in art”. 1 According to the grotesque, the world is chaotic and distorted; a world of redundancy and cross-leakage between different domains. Yet it also indicates an inward look at the imaginary, the psychological, and the fantastic. Nogah, In your work, the situation appears complex. You think of the grotesque when you paint angels that convey fragility, as if they were made of air and spirit rather than of solid material or mass. Your critical view seems to be deeply embedded in socio-historical thought, but you express the grotesque with a smile, generating empathy in the viewers. 1 Ramat Gan: Museum of Israeli Art, 1993, p. 18.