In her Back-Yard drawing exhibition, Michal Ben-Zeev combines Place and Consciousness with fierce virtuosity. The back yard is a place attached to the home. It’s a hidden area where utensils, objects, expired items not yet disposed-of are dumped. It’s a Purgatorium for abandoned materials. For two years has Ben-Zeev been loitering Israel’s back yards, in villages and cities documenting their occurrences. In a collection of expressive, wild, sizzling paintings she creates an accomplished mosaic of the visible to the eye and hidden from the heart.
The repressed abandonment piling in Israel’s backyards, revealed in the paintings is at times funny, happy, enlightening and at times gloomy, depressing, savage and vicious just like the human consciousness.

With impeccable sensitivity, Ben-Zeev identifies the context and uses this metaphor to draw with precision and dexterity, with humour and shrewdness her mental state.
As in her previous exhibition at Zadik, Ben-Zeev weaves faithful raw materials: in the details of the tractor, the tile and leaves and digs beneath the composition, context and content. The synthesis between the sense of reality and the fantastic invention which is at the heart of Ben-Zeev’s work bursts in this exhibition in full force.

Closing:​ 05.07.14