Sale: Auction 150 Date of sale: 06.07.2013 Item: 178

Eran Reshef

Pink cabinet, 1998-1999, Oil on board, 234X185 cm. Signed and dated. Literature & Exhibition: Eran Reshef, 2000-2010, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Varda Steinlauf, June 2011 – September 2011, p. 6 (Illustrated). The enormous painting of the bath tub combines a clean towel, very modern in its synthetic colors, to an old, very cracked tub that nests on a floor which due to age, is close to collapse. Strips of old adhesive from items that were stripped off, or were stuck on, are very prominent. A small cupboard, newly painted pink, hangs over the tub, but two lines of rust descend along its edges on the stained wall. The open cupboard is a small sign of life, evidence of its use in the present, as the clean towel and the sponge floating in the bath water are emissaries of the person living in the house, as if they are items floating with difficulty on the masses sinking into the chasm of decay and disintegration. The precise and extremely sensitive design of these decadent details is the story of the painting; what is frozen is not the illusion of reality, but the illusion of stopping time, and this in turn reveals the galloping force of time and decay that permeates everything. Something of the quality of Vanitas – from the Baroque era – is to be found here, but without the moralistic, finger floating above, warning of Memento Mori. Reshef is not the preacher at the gate, rather he observes and appeals to others to observe as well. There is much pessimism and deep melancholy in his view, but no solution, no way out. No fetishistic pleasure is taken in the items which are growing old before his eyes. He has a certain soberness that lays bare the anatomy of the decay, without giving it any kind of pathos.

Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld.

Estimated price: $50,000 - 70,000

Sold for: 71300

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About: Eran Reshef

Eran Reshef was born in 1964 in Tel Aviv, where he still lives and works till today. Reshef studied his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Brooklyn, New York. He was taught by the painter Lennart Anderson, and thoroughly studied figurative painting. Eran Reshef paints in a figurative and realistic style. He mainly paints realistic, everyday objects charged with emotional and political contexts. Reshef only paints from direct observation and does not copy from photographs. Perspective is very important in his works and he creates in a slow matter in order to reach maximum accuracy. Reshef presented a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2011. Regarding his works Varda Steinlauf wrote: "Eran Reshef's paintings ask the viewer to give them another look, a glance that goes beyond the technical achievement of the exact representation. The presence of objects, such as the chicken placed in the refrigerator or the loaf of bread, is more than the objects that exist in the real world. They are charged with significance and ambivalence, and all the details that make up the painting - composition, texture, shape and color - appear as if through a magnifying glass, sharp and blunt in their presence. In Eran Reshef's paintings there is no adherence to "what is in reality." And perhaps even more than that, there is a realism in his paintings that avoids the desire to create symbols; Restraining the desire for absolute beauty and controlling the desire to "fix" the revealed and bring it closer to the districts of imagination. The great complexity of these paintings is based on strict, rigorous, sometimes difficult, and even sublime effects. This is an opportunity to explore the genre of painting known as figurative-realism that transcends beyond the material. " In 2010 Reshef won the Haim Schiff Award for Figurative-Realistic Art. Reshef's paintings are in high demand and in 2013 a painting by him was sold at Tiroche Auction House for $71,000, a record price for the artist. Reshef is one of the most sought-after contemporary artists in the Israeli art scene and his works can be found in leading collections in Israel and around the world, in places such as the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum, the IDB Collection and more.
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