Etty Lev | Memories

Curator: Yuval Ben Shloush

Etty Lev, Paintings 2016

“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.”

― Luis Buñuel

 A glimpse into the new works of artist Etti Lev sends the viewer off on a journey, a journey of paint and emotion. Painting since the age of 15, Lev is known for her Wassili Kandinsky-esque creations, mimicking musical compositions.

Like her previous exhibitions, here too Lev creates in a powerful burst of color. In the past year Lev has created a series of some 40 pieces, presented in the current exhibition. She “harmonizes” in her trademark light-blue, red, orange, and mustard-yellow. This is the first time, however, that her “concert” is also infused with black – an anti-color that swallows all others. In one of her works, a small black swelling in the center of the canvas forms what appears to be a crouching woman; it is a black that flickers momentarily, surrounded by Lev’s orange, mustard, turquois and light-blue signatures. Black appears again and again in various paintings, each time daring in a different manner. At time it appears to have a completely different statement from all other colors. In one instance it forms a large X amidst a celebration of colors, a reminder that within the beautiful joy of the world hides a different reality. In yet another work it is the primary focus, a painting-within-a-painting of sorts, a strong, dominant square in the center of a reality of paint. Lev signs her name in black, tying it back to the main motif.

Although Lev has always perceived herself an abstract artist, mostly expressing herself via sounds, the majority of her works include figurative motifs bubbling beneath the surface. Windows, ladders, primarily grid-like imagery which attempts to find order within disorder, silence within noise.

Pablo Picasso said that even the abstract begins as something, a figurative étude‏. Lev is driven by emotion, but within these musical études she wishes to mark something. Human experience resides there, like in her old works depicting her mother. This time a blue, human figure appears through an orange frame. It is unclear whether it is male or female, but it sticks out in the midst of this bustling burst of enveloping color – void of identity and real personality, a faded memory of someone or something from long ago.

Lev’s grandfather, artist Avraham Zarchiya, taught at the Bezalel School for Arts during the 1920s. While his granddaughter surely speaks the language of abstract and modern style, she admits that her grandfather’s legacy and memory still surround her, manifesting in her life as in her art. Several of his works are still kept at her home, and his face peers out of family photos around the house.

Jerusalem-born Lev began her journey at the hands of Eliyahu Gat, and then Shimon Avni and Elkalai. “It all started with smudges,” she attests. In addition to the figurative symbols dotting her works, it seems that the geometric shapes and blotches are memories, associations to events and people who once were and are now gone. Lev’s black square, split by red stripes, becomes almost human.

Instead of the traditional, authoritative black used by most artists, Lev’s signature is always masked by the dominant color of her composition. She signs her name in light blue, turquois and red, merging her name with the grid of her work as if to say: “here I am, all of me, and my signature is an inseparable part of my artistic expression”.

The passion of her painting is undoubtedly transferred via her technique. Using brushes, spatulas and other tools, she does the opposite of flattening the paint – she creates bold textures upon her canvas, smudging paint with vigor, as though sculpting them.

An overview of Lev’s exhibition is not unlike the act of looking through many frames which, eventually, make up a complete film. It is her film, and perhaps ours as well.

Miri Krymilowski, art critic