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Passersby

Exhibitions: Artist House Tel Aviv 2023
Curator: Arie Berkowitz

The works centers on the perception of the social essence of the street, anonymous passersby, and random occurrences.

The paintings present passersby, who, according to Jean-Paul Sartre, can be regarded as duplications of sorts of the individual, allowing each to exist as a separate entity and all of them as a group. The individuals are presented randomly and monotonously; they lack uniqueness and seem similar, which renders the ordinary everyday into something compelling and attractive.

The painting captures an ordinary transient moment; its figures are regular. For example, an incidental group of people gathering at a given moment in a train station only to be replaced with another anonymous group without much difference.

Maurice Blanchotdefines the everyday 'as a movement through which the individual exists, human anonymity, with a touch of personal reality, almost faceless. The everyday is not found in our places of residence, in museums, libraries, but in the street. The everyday is in the sense that you pass by it unknowingly, where nothing happens and can surprise us."

The queue for the train or the bus is an example of people waiting to partake in a journey; even the number of people is random.

According to Sartre, "people differ in age and status, often do not talk to each other, they simply exist side by side in a multitude of solitudes. Loneliness from the group is by choice."

נסים טל-מחכים למטרו 1, תחנת היינה, דיסלדורף, צילום האמן.jpg
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