In an exhibition of large-scale paintings, Zohar Cohen gives in his unique language, a spectacular interpretation to viewing scenery.

Cohen’s drive in his paintings is to grasp truth and let go. Letting the painting expose the whole of the soul rather than the visible. After spending long spans of time in the landscape, Cohen brings with him into the studio dozens of testimony-drawings that form the outline to his paintings. Rahaf river, Odem forest, Achziv beach, or Jisr az-Zarqa, are real locations where Cohen dwells with paper, the cloth, pencils and water colors, in a sensation of inability to confront reality.

Out of humbleness and humility, he chooses to paint scenery without painting it, but rather adapt it to the painting experience. By doing so, he eliminates the accuracy of the image, light and shadow and proportions, perspective, depth-of-field and outline appointing the movement, the rhythm the tone, the air and the paint to become substitutes to nature’s fleetness.

Cohen likens the interaction between him and nature and art, as games: rubbing, splashing and wallowing in the substance beside feelings of joy, passion and catharsis. The physicality of the oil paint, smooth stretched sheets of canvas and fine brushes, make the awaited dialogue possible. Paint which is an entity, becomes- through rhythmical brushstrokes- thousands of dense lines of information pertaining to the growing distance between reality and artmaking. On the canvas, not a single spot is left unpainted. The thicker the paint layers, the more the physicality between Cohen and nature vanishes, and the intimacy between Cohen and nature materialize.

Thus, Cohen’s surrender to reality metamorphoses in his work into a virtuoso show, exceptional and extravagant.

Closing: 30.04.17