Rotem Manor

Biography

"My paintings describes places. Most of these places truly exist and I have been there in reality. Within the seemingly natural surroundings, some strange objects appear: all types of garbage, wild flora, remains of culture. That's how the world is build: order and chaos, logical rules and passionate destruction. Contemporary reality of commercials, signs, animation, digital stimulations, pollution, drugs and Newage, membrane into this fast moving paintings. I look at the views around me, particularly Israeli landscape, and show them as my own dreams. The images have no sign of figures, no humans nor animals. They seem like an abandoned zones which exist without any need for a living being in them. The absence of figure allows the viewer to experience the work as their own private place to wander around. The painting actions divert between depicting light, depth, and perspective to abstract and flatness of forms. As if the painting would be a battlefield of the need to describe and knowing that the description is merely a flat illusion with defined borders. Vibrant colors and materials are overflowing generously around, sometimes with controlled care and other times with an impulsive unstoppable urge. But the outcome is not necessarily dark and apocalyptic. The works has an humoristic playful side to them and lots of passion for the art of painting and color. I believe life can be art if you only choose to see it that way. Art allows me to share with others the specific perspective in which I experience life and hope that the viewers can relate to that from their own unique point of view. The two paintings in the current exhibition are based on photographs of an Israeli city called Lod. During my job as restorer of old paintings I get there often. Lod is a mixed city of Arabs and Jewish citizens. It has some very poor neighborhoods where sometimes garbage is overflowing. I looked at the environment as a painter and found great beauty mixed with melancholy and it drived me to create these two pieces. "