tête-à-tête
Ruby Bat-Arnon
Curator: Galit Semel
In this exhibition, Ruby Bat-Arnon tries to raise questions about the status of the modern woman of the 21st century. Questions of identity, gender and social construction are intertwined and serve as a platform for raising issues related to the way women are represented.
Observation tête-à-tête¹ of the works presents an intimate perception of observation. First observation produces an aesthetic and harmonious appearance, further observation produces discomfort and deception, after closely observing the number of disruptions - the proportions of the body are elongated, the face is sometimes expressionless and the eyes are lifeless. The dominant women of Bat-Arnon do not represent the perfect beauty. They are imperfectly perfect, the idealism of beauty distorted and therefore rendered imperfect. This is a sort of "correction" that Naomi Wolfe² spoke about in her book The Beauty Myth, in which she claimed that the advancement of women from their historical fate can occur only when women break the prevailing myths.
The works range from surrealistic to grotesque to fantasy and reveal the complexity of dealing with the female figure. Female representation is essentially flawed and does not exist as a complete identity. The woman's body is represented simultaneously by a number of entities that merge together and their boundaries become blurred within a single female figure. Hybridity, physicality, sexuality, alienation, tragedy and threatening³ mingle into a conflict between the ridiculous, the frightening and the dreadful in a reality that seems incomprehensible, foreign and threatened. Bat-Arnon uses the familiar materials of reality. The concrete, earthly world, physical and body, animals and plants are used as raw materials in her works, which are characterized by the hybridization of objects that differ from one another.
The hybrid motif is expressed in realistic representations of female characters, often dressed in traditional Dutch costumes of the 17th century, alongside the integration of inanimate objects and living creatures, while merging them with scenery. Hybridity is also expressed in the fact that the marginal becomes central and the holy and the pure become impure and defiled. As a result, absurd and paradoxical works are created that describe a heterogeneous and chaotic eclectic reality in which interrelated subjects can be found.
The foreignness and grotesque are built on the basis of the familiar position of traditional portrait painting. In a laborious technique of oil on canvas, the ladies are depicted in portrait paintings, in the profile of three-quarters, or in full body descriptions. Most women do not look straight, and if so, their gaze is hidden by an oppressive mask that conceals their faces and causes them to suffer and to become deformed.
The magic of the works stems from the similarity in technique and style of the Dutch Old Masters work of the Renaissance (14th-17th centuries). While growing up in the Netherlands, Bat-Arnon was influenced by the masterpieces of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Jan van Eyck, and others, whose work was of great importance to a beauty as an imitation of nature and therefore emphasized the perspective, light, symmetry and composition in the portraits, the still nature. Bat-Arnon creates in her paintings a new reality, surprising and unexpected, but remaining true to nature. Without and without it being a contradiction - paints new things and imitates nature. For example, a tattoo of the Louis Vuitton logo is stamped on the realistic image of Our Lady. This symbolism symbolizes the expression of an uprising against the chauvinistic conception of women as objects. The figures of the women represent a defiance of the accepted normative order and reflect a flawed reality. The grotesque body is presented as a critique of the postmodern society that perceives women as object, sexual object, victim, and acting instrument.
Bat-Arnon is aware of the temporary of life and points out this by a skull, whose purpose is to remind human beings that they are dying⁴, a motif that appears in many works of art, especially in the Renaissance. In the paintings there is a great symbolism: nudity symbolizes fragility rather than sexuality; The collar symbolizes submission and the burden placed on women's shoulders; The mask symbolizes concealment. The women wear the modern superman's mask of the perfect woman - the careerist on the one hand and the housewife on the other. The grotesque dimension of the masks is associated with ritualism, disguise and camouflage - a carnival characteristic that dates back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe. The symbolic works are shrouded in mystery and sanctity that makes them unique and magical.
1In French: "tête-à-tête" - head to head
2Naomi Wolf, Myth of Beauty, Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2004.
3The threatened is a Freudian concept (in German Unheimlich and English ("The Uncanny" indicating something familiar, but at the same time also Strangely alienated. G. Freud, 1988 1919 ("The Threatened", Beyond the Pleasure Principle, from German: Haim Isaac, Dvir, Tel Aviv.
4In Latin: "memento mori" - Remember to die.