Tsibi Geva | Balata Head

Tsibi Geva | Balata Head
Opening Reception: Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014
Curator: Leore Yahel Ohad

Tsibi Geva is known as a political artist, whose works deal with social and political subject matters that express a social state and an inter-cultural dialogue, and with the dichotomy inherent to the Israeli-Palestinian existence. His works are characterized by the use of local images that express a cultural socio-political state and social conflicts.
The works featured in the current exhibition are late extrapolations, different states of the Balata motif, which started to appear in Geva’s work in the late 1980s. The image originates in a word which is a compressed capsule of meanings – Balata as a floor tile, as the name of the refugee camp in the West Bank, or the Israeli phrase “Balata Head” which refers to inanity and obtuseness.
On the formal level, these works develop a fascinating research in strategies of filling up an area, covering and revealing, models and painting patterns. The tiles paintings are structured like geological cross sections or cosmological maps, which defy any attempt to visually reconstruct the way they were made.
Zemack Gallery hosts Tsibi Geva for this show, which presents four works that were not exhibited until now, and offer a focused look into the development of a motif that became indentified with, and central to, Geva’s work.