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Rotem Reshef

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Israeli-American abstract painter and site-specific installation artist
Rotem Reshef
רתם רשף
Rotem Reshef in her studio
Born1964
Rehovot, Israel
NationalityIsraeli-American
EducationHaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts, Reinwardt Academie
Known forAbstract painting, site-specific installation art
Notable workControl
StyleAbstract, action painting, process art
SpouseShai Reshef
AwardsArte Laguna Prize, Honorable Mention in the London International Creative Competition

Rotem Reshef (Hebrew: רתם רשף; born 1964) is an Israeli-American abstract painter and site-specific installation artist known for her process-based action painting technique and large-scale works, characterized by vivid and exuberant compositions. She works and lives in Tel Aviv and New York. She presented solo museum exhibitions at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, the Bakersfield Museum of Art in Bakersfield, California and at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv.

Biography

Rotem Reshef was born in Rehovot, Israel. Her maternal grandfather is the Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky. Her parents are Yehezkel (Hezi) Avivi, honorary citizen of Rehovot and Tsila Avivi. She has two siblings; her brother is the film producer Gidi Avivi. She attended and graduated from the HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts, Ramat HaSharon (1985–1988). During her studies, she was the recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (AICF) Sharett Prize for Young Artists. She took part in a group exhibition of the awarded artists at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art She received her Master's in Museology from Reinwardt Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2002–2004).

In 2010, Reshef won the Arte Laguna Prize. Her paintings covered two of the winery's bottle labels. Her work, “Deep”, was awarded an honorable mention in the London International Creative Competition (LICC) in 2014. She participated as an artist-in-residence at the following institutes: in 2015 at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, in 2021 at Residency Unlimited and in 2022 at The New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation, both in Brooklyn, New York.

Murals by her are on permanent display in Detroit, Michigan and in Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv.

Personal life

Rotem Reshef is married to Shai Reshef, the founder and president of the University of the People. She has four grown-up children.

Artistic tradition and practice

In an article about Reshef in Haaretz, Prof. Avraham Balaban characterized her as a student of Raffi Lavie from the Want of Matter art school, who took the opposite path and followed Ofakim Hadashim school of Joseph Zaritsky, an Abstract Artist, painted in a vivid abundance colors. Her style brings to mind Action Painting or Process Art, which works in two and three-dimensional forms in sculptural painting installations. Her work is based on the tradition of Jackson Pollock, following the footsteps of Katharina Grosse’s site-specific installations and Sam Gilliam’s large-scale indoor/outdoor works. Reshef's installations are site-specific and relate to the surroundings of the exhibition space. She used to collect foliage and place them on a scroll, according to her scheme. The Curator and art critic, Peter Frank wrote: “In her painting installations, Reshef looks for circumstances, historical and contemporary. And in those circumstances, she identifies social and economic factors... Reshef alludes to discrete but simultaneous conditions and standpoints, not to judge them so much as to share them with us so as to prompt our own investigation. Reshef provides the metaphors, we pursue the comprehensions... She seeks... to... translating a social and scientific discourse into aesthetic sensation.”

Bodies of work and exhibitions

In earlier works, starting in 2010, Reshef used a painting technique in diluted acrylic paint and intuitive work without brushes. For her first installation exhibition in Art Space TLV in 2016, Sagi Refael, the exhibition's curator, named it "Control | Release," a method of painting described her creation style ever since. It comprised 44 meters (142 feet) of painting scrolls hung from the ceiling to the floor and surrounding the gallery. In 2017, Reshef installed her wide-ranging composition “Time Traveler” in a solo exhibition at the Tall Wall Space in the University of La Verne, California. Photographer and videographer Eric Minh Swenson documented the formation of that composition on-site. "Time Traveler" was created with six scrolls of paintings interwoven horizontally and vertically into a color-blended big grid. Symbolizing the passage of time, the four seasons interlaced to create a cohesive tapestry in the entire installation. The canvases were rendered with diverse techniques, colors, and ambiance, reflecting our period and inundated by images from all directions. The six scroll paintings are blended in a clash of simultaneous climates, denoting the climate change phenomenon as rain and storms in the summer and heat waves in the winter. “Time Traveler” was in a new contour at the Kwan Fong Art Gallery at California Lutheran University, renamed “Time Traveler: Part ll - Compass”, as a more political expansion of the original artwork. By "Compass", Reshef offers the viewers inner introspection in an era of visionless leaders who cannot navigate their countries and communities onto havens. The artwork rendered a sanctuary of silent observation and vast interpretations to the viewers, suggesting that they follow their path and inner passions and not necessarily the objectives politicians acquaint them.

In the summer of 2018, Reshef presented two new bodies of work: the outdoor installation “Intervals” on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv and “Spectrum” at the Soho House in West Hollywood, California. “Spectrum” manifested Reshef's interest in the process of art making and in different ways to depict the elusive nature of the passing time and the fleeting seasons. The 22 paintings in this series presented monochromatic stages inspired by the different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, accentuating the existing yet invisible rays of light. The ultraviolet radiation waves are on the shorter end of the spectrum, while the infrared wave of light is on the longer end. These ends also mark the shifting tonalities and full range of hues between warm colors of reds and yellows to cold colors of blues and purples, sensualizing a change of moods and atmospheres, from somber to cheerful, from coolness to passion. Between 2018 and 2024, Reshef exhibited four site-specific outdoor murals on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists׳ House in Tel Aviv. The first mural, "Intervals" (2018), presented an optical illusion with twenty faux "windows" revealing bold, abstract monochromatic paintings. Embodying tonal transitions from warm to cool colors, these works illuminated an atmosphere scale in passing the seasons through the shades, temperatures, and emotional qualities affected by shortening and lengthening cycles of hours and days during the year. Reshef's second mural project at the Artists’ House, “Eden in Two Acts” (2019), was split into two parts and responded to the second round of the Israeli legislative election in September 2019. In 2020, Reshef presented the painting installation: "A Heartfelt Event" in The Lab, Tel Aviv. The work was accompanied by a sound composition based on a voice recording from the protests against Benjamin Netanyahu that Reshef collected near the Prime Minister's Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem in the summer of 2020. In October 2022, she staged her third mural, "Encore: At the Rate of a Heartbeat," on Tel Aviv's Artists House façade, a few weeks before the third round of the Israeli legislative election in November 2022. Alongside Reshef's immersive painting installations, she continued developing her "imprinting" paintings, which resulted in her "Ghost Libraries" and "Fossil" series of 2017–2018 and "Habitat" of 2019.

In October 2019, Reshef presented her solo exhibition "Arcadia," a painting installation at the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York. She was referring to Nicolas Poussin's painting Et in Arcadia ego. The installation deals with the tension between the picturesque landscape and environment of the museum's natural surroundings, the potential of turmoil, and the suspended belligerence below the surface, both in American and Israeli societies.

In June 2022, Reshef presented the installation "Passage" at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv. The installation aimed to elevate the awareness of human impact on the environment and encourage nature conservation. To create "Passage," Reshef used trimmings from Tel Aviv's parks and the Tel Aviv University's botanical garden near the museum. She alludes to the museum's laboratories and depicts its libraries. In October 2022, she presented “Terra Incognita”, her first ceramic installation, as part of a group exhibition at the Center for the Arts at Towson University, which was chosen as one of the ten best Baltimore exhibitions by BmoreArt magazine. Art critic Fanni Somogyi wrote: “As I look at it, I yearn for the smell of wet grass and freshly dug up earth... I'm drawn to the way this sculpture holds memory for both the artist and the viewer.”

In 2023, Reshef presented her site-specific installation "Vista" at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, California. She was fascinated by the Panorama Vista Preserve, Bakersfield, and how it merges with Kern River Oil Field. She amassed permitted native foliage (trees, shrubs, and flowers) and then imprinted parts on the canvases. Curator Peter Frank wrote: “With “Vista,” Rotem Reshef portrays Bakersfield – from the inside out. Reshef does not simply look at the city, she re-embodies its salience. “Vista” brings forth the inner dynamic of a municipality that encompasses and embraces both nature and industry, a town in which extractive commerce is integral to the ecosphere. Reshef does not judge this reality, but recapitulates it, presenting – re-presenting... she seeks... to... translating a social and scientific discourse into aesthetic sensation".

In 2024, Reshef presented her "Family of Earth" exhibition at Moshe Smilansky's Culture House, Municipal Gallery in Rehovot, Israel. The exhibition deals with Moshe Smilansky, Reshef's maternal grandfather and one of the founders of Rehovot, his Zionist vision and its partial fulfillment in current Israel reality alongside its partial clashing with it, and the generation gap.

Gallery

Solo Exhibitions

Group exhibitions

References

  1. ^ Rotem Reshef. Information Center for Israeli Art. Israel Museum.
  2. ^ Prof. Avraham Balaban (July 10, 2018). Tel Aviv reflections: Want of Matter opposition. Haaretz.
  3. (May 9, 2023). Hezi Avivi, honorary citizen of Rehovot. My Rehovot.
  4. Avivi Yehezkel Hezi, family tree. Digital Families Album. Genealogy Center in the name of Sir Arthur Gilbert, Rishon LeZion Museum.
  5. ^ Yonatan H. Mishal (December 22, 2019). Learning to Paint All Over Again. Erev Rav.
  6. ^ Rotem Reshef. Winner at 4th edition. Tenuta S. Anna, Venice, Italy.
  7. Deep by Rotem Reshef, honourable mention in painting. London International Creative Competition (LICC).
  8. ^ James Kipton Cronkite (August 21, 2018). NY & Tel-Aviv Based Painter, Rotem Reshef.
  9. Rotem Reshef. RU (Residency Unlimited) Residency.
  10. Rotem Reshef (Israel). NARS Foundation.
  11. ^ Ashley Zlatopolsky (June 8, 2023). Midtown Mural. The Jewish News (Detroit).
  12. ^ About. The Artists’ House in Tel Aviv.
  13. Julie Wiener (January 8, 2013). An Israeli ‘Citizen Of The World’. Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
  14. ^ Sagi Refael (2016). Control l Release exhibition catalogue, pp. 7-11.
  15. Rachel McCullah Wainwright, Bakersfield Museum of Art curator (2023). Vista exhibition catalogue.
  16. ^ Peter Frank. The Bright Side, Gallery RAM, Bakersfield, California catalogue.
  17. Jacqueline Bell Johnson (December 14, 2017). Time Traveler – Rotem Reshef. Art and Cake.
  18. Sagi Refael (2017). Time Traveler. Exhibition catalogue.
  19. (2018) Time Traveler Part II – Compass exhibition catalogue.
  20. Nicole Behnam and James Kipton Cronkite (July 22, 2018). Rotem Reshef on her New Art Series: ‘Spectrum’. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
  21. Eden in Two Acts - Part I: Rotem Reshef. Artist House, Tel Aviv.
  22. Sharon Toval (2020). Rotem Reshef: A Heartfelt Event. Heartfelt Event catalogue, The Lab, Pp. 34-36.
  23. (August 15, 2022). Rotem Reshef: Ghost Images. Tussle Magazine.
  24. Michele Wije, Katonah Museum of Art curator (2019). An interview with Rotem Reshef. Rotem Reshef ARCADIA catalogue. Katonah Museum of Art.
  25. "Passage" by Rotem Reshef. Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.
  26. BmoreArt Team (December 30, 2022). BmoreArt's Ten Best Baltimore Exhibits of 2022. BmoreArt.
  27. Fanni Somogyi (October 5, 2022). Excess and Access: Contemporary Ceramics at Towson University. BmoreArt.
  28. Stefani Dias (January 25, 2023). A scenic 'Vista' unfolds at BMoA. The Bakersfield Californian.
  29. (January 24, 2024). Faimly of earth deals with intergemerational connections. Maariv Online.
  30. Ellie Armon Azoulay (August 27, 2009). Gallery conversation, New exhibitions. Haaretz.
  31. Avital Burg (April 1, 2010). Art For Sale. Haaretz.
  32. (30 September 2017). Rotem Reshef. Wall Street International Magazine.
  33. Irit Cohen (August 11, 2016). Control l Release, Art Space TLV. At Journal.
  34. (2016). Phantom Storm. Can Magazine. p. 19-20.
  35. Emily Body (March 14, 2018). Time Traveler: Compass, Kwan Fong Gallery. VC Reporter.
  36. ^ Rotem Reshef. America-Israel Cultural Foundation.
  37. (February 15, 2018). Rotem Reshef | Time Traveler: Compass. California Lutheran University.
  38. Reut Barnea (July 15, 2018). Intervals puzzles the spectators with Its Unique Technique. Calcalist.
  39. Peter Elston (November 2022). Time Out With.... New York Lifestyles Magazine.
  40. Eden in Two Acts. Artists House, Tel Aviv.
  41. Katonah Museum of Art Features Israeli Artist Rotem Reshef.
  42. (December 2, 2020). In her exhibition "Heatfelt Event" Rotem Reshef intertwined heartbeats with the protest trumps. Art Today.
  43. Hagit Peleg Rotem (August 26, 2022). Rotem Reshef is making it in New York (and Tel Aviv). Portfolio.
  44. (August 15, 2022). Rotem Reshef: Ghost Images. Tussle Magazine.
  45. Tony Hoffman (March 2024). Transcription, Articulation, and Respiration in Rotem Reshef: Vista. Whitehot Magazine.
  46. Stefani Dias (April 12, 2023). Enjoy an afternoon of art with Rotem Reshef. The Bakersfield Californian.
  47. Sharon Meirovich (February 21, 2024). The exhibition "Family of Earth", depicting Rehovot establishent and continuing to present times. 08 News.
  48. (June 8 – 28, 2006.) Inaugural Exhibition. Susan Eley Fine Art.
  49. KDHamptons Art Scene: QF Gallery Opens Group Artist Summer 2013 Exhibition — A Picnic and Smokes!. KDHamptons.
  50. Imrint #10 Rotem Reshef: The 30th Tallahassee International – Friday, August 28th. The Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts.
  51. (July 27 - August 31, 2019). Dreamin’ of a.... Charlie James Gallery.
  52. (November 15, 2022). EX-tend EX-cess: Metamorphosis in Clay at Towson University Center For The Arts. Ceramics Now.
  53. Traces: Memory, Nature and the Body

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