Bardo | Adi T. Hoffman
Litvak Contemporary
9 days left
Litvak Contemporary is proud to present works from Adi T. Hoffman's solo exhibition BARDO.
The drawing in the painting is joined by art historical references, gestures to action and abstract painting, and vanitas themes like skulls, withered flowers, and fruits, reflecting life's transience.
The exhibition deals with a continuous intermediate state between life and death based on two books. The first is a personal sketch book, which the artist drew following her stay with her father at the Sheba Tel-Hashomer Hospital. The sketches in the book are attempts to capture a fleeting moment: wheelchairs, medical equipment, bones, skulls and hospital beds were repeatedly drawn in black charcoal. The drawing serves Hoffmann as a kind of unmediated medium, connecting the mind, the eye and the hand. Each of the drawings was created in the blink of an eye, and serves as an expressive testimony to the event that took place, combining fragments of truth and imagination. There is no thought about composition or perspective in them, but mainly impressions from observation that led the hand across the page. The immediacy of the drawing echoes the ephemerality of a moment and the intention to preserve the elusive feeling of fleeting moments. After a while, it became apparent that, unintentionally, every drawing in the notebook was transferred to the opposite page, creating a "phantom" image of a faded drawing opposite the original one.
The second book is the "Bardo Thodol" (or "Tibetan Book of the Dead"): a Buddhist text that is read to the deceased over the 49 days following their death. According to the belief, reading the book helps the soul of the deceased dwell in "Bardo" - a prolonged intermediate state where consciousness is between incarnations, between death and rebirth. This custom expresses the perception of death as a gradual process that begins with the death of the body, and ends with the departure of the soul, when it enters a new body. Similar to the “Shloshim”- the first month of mourning following the funeral in Jewish mourning customs - the Bardo Thodol allows reconciliation with death and parting with the moments, feelings and sensations that characterized the current life that has come to an end.
During the process, in the exhibition, the artist disconnected the drawings from their original context, and transferred them to different mediums or "incarnations": from sketches to expressive, physical and sensual paintings, to an intimate video work of browsing through the book of drawings, and to sculptural objects, which seem to create continuity beyond the boundaries of the painting.
Installation images by Youval Hai
In the transition between the art forms, the dominant black line of the original drawing is preserved, emphasizing the drawing as a connecting element between the various reincarnations and between spirit and matter, seeming to carry the soul of the creation.
The drawing elements in the painting are joined by quotes from art history, gestures to action painting and abstract painting, as well as to vanitas paintings and the skulls, withered flowers, and fruits associated with them, presenting the transience of life.
The artist adds and subtracts color across the surface of the painting, combining patches, inviting us to contemplate and reflect on the depth of time, in the layers woven into it, the overt and hidden presence of death at different stages of life. The same duality of beginning and end, which is always present in every form of life, situation or emotion, indicates that the present moment is nothing but a fragment of a prolonged processes of the formation of life and death, as well.
All works in the exhibition were created before October 7. Yet, following the loss and the heavy mourning, the spectrum of painful and exposed emotions that the exhibition evokes became even more tangible. The first round of the release of the captives took place 49 days after the outbreak of the war - a period of time that is identical to the period of departure in the "Book of the Dead".
According to the book, this period does not amount to complete loss, but also marks the beginning of a new life, contemplation and adaptation to the next life. Following this concept and in front of the works that evolve from sketch to painting, from painting to video and from video to installation, I humbly propose to ask in what ways and forms can the idea of rebirth come true?
