In an exhibition of scenery paintings Amnon Yuhas eloquently phrases the sentiment of cessation. Yuhas repeats and reiterates the “Life and Death” enigma. In the current series of works he examines the topic in its space, a sequel to his previous “Zadik” show where he exhibited a series of still life images of expired objects in order to bestow artistic eternal life on them.

Scenery of landscapes, cities, fields as-well-as houses, rooms and stairways intensify in Yuhas the feeling of existential despair. Vis-à-vis the scenery, his gaze does not grasp the image truthfully but rather floods his pondering conscience. Therefore, as he draws the scenery, the landscape mists, the cities are deserted, the fields become grim, the land is covered with snowy shrouds, the houses are abandoned and the rooms darkened. An image stands at the frame’s fringe, like a ghost observing events. The scenery and its witnessing creator metamorphose into absence in oil over a wooden platform.

Through painting Yuhas manages to accurately and painfully articulate the human grief facing the absurdity of the vanishing existence.
Yuhas precisely draws Haifa’s streets, Jerusalem’s Mamilla pool, and the fields along the Mediterranean lowlands but reserves himself the freedom to convert them to anyplace by adding and omitting identifying details. The unraveled roof tiles, the broken pillars, the dramatic skies, the felled trees and the murky waters add movement, light and depth nonexistent in reality, but enable Yuhas to pounce his stance. Drawing reality and reinventing it as a symbol as Franz Kafka proposes: “Art, like prayer, is a hand stretched out into the dark, seeking to catch something from grace, in order to transform itself into a giving hand.”

Closing:​ 04.07.15