Ora Brill

Ora Brill: Works

Curator: Ilan Wizgan

The Diaghilev Gallery, Tel Aviv

2.8.2019- 14.9.2019

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This exhibition features works on canvas from the last years in which Ora Brill continues and deepens her artistic investigations into the abstract. In her works over the last decade, the artist has developed a definite set of images and symbols that constitute a personal plastic language: structures, ladders, loops, containment images and house images. As a writing person, expressing her thoughts and reflections day by day, Brill uses both languages ​​interchangeably, the written and the illustrated, sometimes merging them both on canvas or on paper.

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In the works presented here, there is a relative reduction of means, compared to the outset of this artistic journey, a reduction in which the image is placed on a contrasting and relatively clean background, without "background noise". Among the abstract images, an identifiable image emerges from time to time: a face, flowers, a home ... Fine and delicate touches with pencils, pens and markers, along with expressive brushstrokes in acrylic paint, create a dialogue between delicate and rough, weak and strong, sensitive and vibrant and the stable and certain. The predominant colors - blue, green and bloodlike - are identified with thought and reflection, secret and mystery. We are witnessing here an artistic journey that overlaps a life journey, sometimes revealing and often covering autobiographical memories and events.

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Among other clichés that characterize art analysis, it is customary to say that portrait painters always draw themselves, even if each time a different model sits in front of them, or they always say the same thing over years of creation, just in a slightly different way. Both statements are not judgmental and certainly not negative, but rather usually indicate depth of thought, an endless search for truth, focus and creation around some anchor. Part of that holds true for Ora Brill whose compositions and images have repeatedly rolled through her paintings and drawings over the years, and yet are always surprising in new contexts and attire.

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This is true for most of the paintings on display in the exhibition, except for the large painting that opens it. This painting has four main elements: an image reminiscent of a roof of a house, kala flowers, a string of words, and the pasting of an enlarged old photograph. Unlike the rest of the paintings in the exhibition, which are characterized by 'traditional' content and form, this painting links together different content worlds and time contexts: a personal portrait (the artist's portrait as a child), sensual flowers that mention the artist Georgia O'Keefe, "tagged" words that characterize the Social media ... This painting is part of a body of work created out of attention and identification with the harsh phenomena that have been exposed to us in recent years, whether these are manifestations of past and present sexual harassment (Me Too campaign), Internet harassment, or child abuse. The image of a girl holding a finger to her lips emphasizes the secrecy and silence of these acts, and at the same time, in the context of these specific exhibition and space, urges those who enter the exhibition space to change 'modes' and move from a noisy and chaotic exterior experience to another experience, quiet, intimate, and attentive to the finest and slightest of sounds.