fagin’s adventures/assorted works on paper

works by eyal danieli

february 10 – march 12, 2011
opening reception: thursday feb. 10, 6-8pm

The Elizabeth Harris gallery is pleased to present Fagin’s Adventures/ assorted works on paper, a selection of work by Eyal Danieli. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Spanning the last three years, the exhibition is comprised of works on paper in various media and subject matter. Continuing his practice of revisiting images, Danieli melds his drawing process with the editing and arranging, hanging extensive series on his studio walls. Replicating some of this process in the gallery, the exhibition includes various series/groupings pinned to the walls, and monotypes made during a key holder residency at The Lower East Side Printshop. The combination of these bodies of work exemplifies the artist’s preoccupations across diverging media and allows a consideration of the effect that size, media, and technique have on the work.

While personal experience is the impetus to the work, Danieli places it in a broader social/political context. Having grown up in Israel, in a militaristic culture scarred by persecution and genocide, and mired in continuing violence, Danieli eschews dogmatic political statement, focusing on the equivocal nature of images. Conflating charged iconic symbols on opposing sides of human conflagration, he searches for metaphors that convey the blurring of definitions in the complexity of our lives, expressing the transformative experience of victimhood into victimization, simultaneously expressing aggression and pain.

In groups that may look sequential, and at times suggest narrative, he creates connections hinted at through the juxtaposition of disparate images. The definitions of series, set, or sequence, are fluid and interchangeable. The drawings become visual units, whose placement within different arrangements defy any one specific interpretation.

Delving into text, initially four letter words truncated by the pictorial plane, leaving it to the viewer to decode and “read”, and using the recurrent themes of helicopters, a figure raising his hand similarly to the Nazi salute, camels and Muslim women with their faces veiled, and most recently a Hasidic figure, he seeks expression for the role trauma has in forming identity, while expressing his own empathy with these characters.

Although the drawings seem to be conceived as part of a large installation, he attempts to distill in each one the essence of the impetus that spurred him. “Composing” the arrangements is one part in a process that begins with an attempt at succinct mark making, that is direct, distilled and evocative, and that individually represents the spirit of the whole installation.

Eyal Danieli lives and works in New York City and Brooklyn. He studied painting at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and at the New York Studio School. Danieli has exhibited his work in various one man and group exhibitions in the U.S and in Europe. His drawings have been exhibited in a project space at MOMA/PS1 Queens, and most recently he exhibited his work in a one person exhibition at Kudlek Van Der Grinten Galerie in Cologne Germany. He is a recipient of The New York Foundation for the Arts award in drawing, and was awarded a Key Holder grant from The Lower East Side Printshop.

The Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, 6th floor, and is open Tuesday through Saturday 11-6. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, February 10 from 6-8 pm.

for further information contact Miles Manning at 212.463.9666