Tirtzah Bassel
May 15, 2010
About the Art:
I am interested in the way that space informs the movement and performance of people inhabiting it. I scrutinize the spaces that I encounter, questioning: Who occupies the space? Who has the right to move in it? In what space does a performance become a provocation, an act of solidarity, a sign of communication, a form of resistance? I examine both the literal and metaphorical places that I occupy to identify the choreographies that they demand or enable, and use the space of the painting to investigate these relationships between location and performance.
My choice to use human figures and recognizable spaces as the subjects of my paintings, stems from my recognition of the subversive ability of this imagery to appeal directly to the senses and to arouse the tactile imagination. This approach to painting is a result of my formative years. I grew up in Israel, where the charged cultural and political climate that surrounded me, were marked by a singular ideology and a dominant Zionist narrative. These cultural and political spaces dictate prescribed performances and hold the power to create or deny histories, perpetuate violence and segregation, and control the physical and psychological mobility of individuals and collectives. For me, consequently, art is a defiant act that provides me with a language to explore alternative narratives, and to investigate non-conformist perceptions of experience.
And I am fascinated by fleeting acts of intimacy performed between total strangers in public spaces. In Love Is In The Hair I look at subtle moments of physical contact between hairdressers and clients. I explore the ways in which this particular space enables people to communicate in a language of intimacy normally considered unacceptable or threatening among strangers. In the Airport Security series I take this a step further, to look at the tension between eroticism and violence inherent in acts of intimacy that occur in spaces that are threatened by violence. In this space, the physical language of intimacy is utilized as a tool for protection and discrimination.
In Flight Attendants, two flight attendants perform a pre-flight security demonstration of the use of bright orange oxygen masks. The apathy of the two middle aged men sitting bellow them speaks of their indifference to this performance, reinforced by the neutral attitude of the figures in the graphic safety-card images in the adjoining panels. I chose the aircraft, a place of transience, to explore the tension between the banality and urgency that coexist within the language of disaster.
Through this investigation of visual modes for constructing spaces, my paintings are a place for critically exploring social, cultural and political realities. It is a space in which I can imagine with authority, where I can remember, where I can encounter a sense of mystery and otherness.
About the Artist:
Tirtzah Bassel is an Israeli artist who has recently graduated from the MFA in Painting Program at Boston University. Working primarily in oil and intaglio, her work addresses the formal and conceptual relationships between figures and spaces. and has been shown recently in Boston, New York, London and Talahassee. Also visit www.tirtzahbassel.com
“doorway” 2009, oil on canvas, 47″x59″
“love is in the hair” 2009, oil on canvas, 48″x60″
“blue dress” 2009, oil on canvas, 14″x18″
“green floor” 2009, oil on canvas, 42″x53″
“cafe” 2009, oil on canvas, 58″x72″Editorial Remarks: “couple and a rock” 2009, oil on canvas, 14″x18″
Fiction: “table with upside down nude” 2009, oil on canvas, 8″x10″