Niv Tishbi

The Drummer, 2023,
MDF and painted wood,
164X63X106 cm.
Signed, edition 1/3 + 2 AP.

Niv Tishbi is one of the rising stars in the local art scene after presenting a solo exhibition at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art this year (2024), which received enthusiastic reviews and extensive media coverage. Tishbi, a graduate of Bezalel, works across various mediums: sculpture, installation, print, and drawing. His artistic journey revolves around a persistent curiosity about creative possibilities in three-dimensional space. In an era dominated by digital interactions often confined to passive screen interactions, his works engage with the relationship between surfaces and volumes, demanding active observation. In his recent works, he raises questions about personal and mental freedom, as well as social and political liberation, juxtaposing them against mechanisms of organization and control that express oppression and dominance.

Through diverse formats, Tishbi’s sculptures and installations celebrate the complexities of human psyche. His figures express humor and laughter, with a subtle hint of fear and anxiety. Symbolically, through material manipulation, his three-dimensional work emphasizes and challenges the dichotomy.

"The Carnival, " a solo exhibition presented this year (2024) at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, included a large-scale installation – a scene composed of a series of fifteen sculptures with human-scale proportions walking together in one direction.

Originally, the carnival is a folk festival highlighting elements of freedom, fantasy, and imagination. It rebels against social order by celebrating forbidden desires, boundary breaking, and the grotesque.

The festivity, the exuberance, the dazzling colorfulness, along with Tishbi’s use of humor, playfulness, and amusement, give the works a captivating and appealing aesthetic envelope. However, upon closer inspection of the scene and the figures, it appears that Tishbi uses the carnival as a device for social and political critique. The carnival-like festivities and the grotesque body that emerge from it make a sharp statement in the context of organized parades and marches. It is a provocative call wrapped in captivating visual aesthetics and a developed sense of humor, aiming to redirect the spotlight to the glorification, as well as the cult and worship of our society’s military parades, the endless consumption of violence, power, and chaos.

In addition to the solo exhibition at the Herzliya Museum this year, Tishbi has presented several other solo exhibitions, including "Snus" at Warehouse 2, Jaffa (2017) and "Life Factory" at Rothschild 69, Tel Aviv, as part of the outstanding graduate’s scholarship from Bezalel (2014). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Haifa Museum, the Holon Design Museum, and the Nuremberg City Museum in Germany, the Herman Struck Museum, Hanina Gallery, Benjamin Gallery, and more. He is the recipient of the Yossi Stern Prize from Bezalel (2012) and an honorable mention in the Ben-Yitzhak Prize from the Israel Museum (2018).

The sculpture ‘The Drummer’, who led the procession and spearheaded the exhibition "The Carnival", depicts a figure of an orchestra player with human-scale proportions. He tilts the drumsticks in his eyes, as if trying to look through a mirror towards the horizon, paradoxically blinding the one whose role is to lead the way. In this, he evokes the figure of the blind prophet from Greek mythology, who can distinguish between falsehood and truth, between good and evil, whose role is to warn of impending events. Perhaps he inserts the drumsticks into his eyes because he does not want to see where our destinies are headed. The sides of the drum appear to swallow, gaping, echoing the screaming mouth of the player, and together producing a "melody" that oscillates between joy and laughter to the rhythm of warning.

The carpet material is also symbolic – his works examine the human tendency to assert dominance over nature.

Estimated price: $7,000 - $10,000

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