Reuven Zahavi draws the Supreme Court’s spectacular building in black marker on simple, disposable plastic plates.
In his plight facing the blockade smothering anyone not in line with the contemporary ruling system, Zahavi turns to the Supreme Court. In his artwork he pleads for assistance and justice, freedom of opinion and speech.

Zahavi’s distress, exposed in the two series where the vantage points are deceptive: The Supreme court from the jungle, the Supreme court from a beach. The elegant, imposing building- in dialogue with Israelite history in the Book of Judges, with the austere Jerusalem scenery, whose design aims to embody the reflection of spirit in matter- is hidden and dwarfed behind a thicket of trees where ferocious animals roam or a tiny deserted island drifting away from the shore. The grand and Supreme court ruling on issues of the individual’s voice vs. the abusive government, changes in Zahavi’s work from a wishful object of hope into a fragile image, remote, about to vanish in the thicket or horizon.

Zahavi laments the suffocation of culture and art by preventing initiatives and ideas, as well as the volume of the exposure and noise generated by those appointed to oversee them by the government. To focus the attention on the process of dwindling inspiration and artistic discourse, he paints in black marker on tiny, ungainly, simpleton plates in reaction and opposition to the tradition of ornamented porcelain plates – fragile, magnificent china- hung on walls projecting wealth, prestige and aristocracy. In his subversive choice of a cheap platform, duplicated under a press, disposable, shrunken, poor, ridiculed and trashed after use, Zahavi manages to sneak under the radar of censorship and say his mind devoid of fear of supervision, control or vengeance. His quite protest, unthreatening, achieves its goals particularly by being derelict, “since you can’t accuse a worthless plate”.

In the exhibition there are eight acts. Every set of plates is drawn in a lean meticulous language, in black marker, with no layers or strata functioning both as vantage point and acid test to the Supreme Court. Like the effect of the zoom-in in cinema, Zahavi keeps narrowing his viewpoint from surreal panoramic scenery in both Supreme Court in the Jungle and Supreme Court from the Beach, through the scenery details in The Black-Flag, Weeds and Felled Trees, to the series of detailed close-ups of Spiders, Targets and Youths. Thus, Zahavi manages to communicate in metaphoric perfection the process by which a sublime concept in the form of a building- erected to be the lighthouse of conscience and justice- becomes material when debating, judging and ruling as menacing weeds, venomous spiders, and predatory beasts rise to obliterate it.
An explosive, courageous and spectacular portrait of plaintiffs and defendants.