Haran Kislev | Landscape Recipe

Haran Kislev ‘Landscape Recipe’

Opening: Thursday, June 9 at 8 pm
Curator: Yaron Haramati

Haran Kislev (b. 1985) was born in Kibbutz Be’eri, located on the border between Israel and the Gaza strip, where he lives today with his wife and two children.  Through his works, Kislev analyzes the land between Be’eri and Gaza.  The artificial border cuts through the scorching landscape. He deals with life in the shadow of struggle, concrete, armed forces and the road blocked by the border.

“It’s been about a decade that I’ve been involved with the landscape of the Gaza Strip border.  In the early years, I would go there as a hunter looking to confront danger; or like a journalist trying to cover the hottest news event.  As the years passed, all the new scoops disappeared; all the signs of the landscape faded. No fence, no tank, no last juncture before the border. Only the remnants of memory remained of the landscape- in an emotion-filled night. My paintings began to become more and more abstract. Attempts to capture the external landscape soon turned into attempts to capture the internal landscape.”

“For the past two years, my studio has become, in my mind, a chef’s kitchen. The trees, the roads, the border fence and the danger were just a few ingredients among many. Ingredients that were placed in pans on top of a hot stove.  I would take specific ingredients, weigh them carefully, and place them to cook on my canvas.  Stir and fry until the stew is ready. Then serve as complete. The same dishes, though abstract, and by the look of it, further away from the memetic/recognizable landscape, felt to me as if they had never been closer.”

Kislev’s artworks can take up to four months to paint.  Thereafter, he lets the artworks sit in his studio for anywhere between one to two years to dry to a point he can raise the canvas to a vertical position and frame the artwork to be displayed in a museum or gallery exhibition.

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Haran Kislev holds a bachelor’s degree in multidisciplinary art from Shenkar (2016). Haran graduated with honors from Shenkar, winning the Azrieli Foundation Award for Outstanding Students (2013) and the Irene Kreitman Excellence Award (2015). Before starting his studies at Shenkar, he studied at ‘HaTachana’- a studio for drawing and figurative painting in Tel Aviv with David Nipo and Ron Tenenbaum (2009, 2011) and during his undergraduate studies, he studied at the ‘HaKolel’ – Ron Tenenbaum and Guy Avital’s contemporary art studio (2014).

Kislev received the 2018 ‘Young Artist Award’ from the Ministry of Culture and Sport. He exhibited in galleries and museums in Israel and participated in international art fairs. His works are in private and public collections in Israel and abroad. He is represented by Zemack Contemporary Art and this will be his second solo exhibition at the gallery.