In this expansive exhibition Grisha Bluger describes the road from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv and back.
This road has been a routine in Bluger’s life for dozens of years. The historic trail connecting plain and mountains, charged with political, geographical and sociological change is the road from his home to his work. The repetition, memorization, anticipation, intimacy with every lump of earth, the quasi-intuitive familiarity with every trail, bend, community, or river is at the basis of this exhibition.

Bluger passes the highway on highway-1 in a public bus, aware of the changes imprinted by the years and choosing to ignore them. In acrylic on paper, gouache on wood, in tiny prints and text, he addresses a landscape branded in consciousness – an ancient vista, very familiar that cannot be done without.

Bluger does not glorify the beauty of the road but takes it for-granted some meta-road located in his soul. He therefore does-not photograph the road but rather works out of a survival-memory. Hence his choice to draw it in black-and-white as a stain on paper or in soft paint absorbed into wood, spectacular in his ascetic way, rather than a glorious beautified landscape postcard.

Bluger, famed for his refined and humorous artist books does not skip text in this exhibition. The letters and words in English and Hebrew establish a challenge in a narrative regarding memory, particularly since he chooses to use two languages other than his mother tongue. The verbal, foreign lyrical expression does not require explaining, becomes inseparable from the plastic images.

Thus, in Vistato-Vistafro we experience Bluger’s primal memory experience rather than observe a rout between two cities passing through fields, villages, mountains, forests, gates, monasteries, vineyards and asphalt.

Closing: 19.01.14