EXPO ‘Shirly Bar-Amotz: Happy Days’ – Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (IL) – 31 Mai-31 oct. 2012

« Shirly Bar-Amotz: Happy Days »  -  Tel Aviv Museum of Art  (Tel Aviv, Israel)  31-May-2012 – 31-Oct-2012

 

Jewelry serves artist Shirly Bar-Amotz as a means for making socially relevant statements. Using « free craft » which combines precious metals with synthetic materials and ready-made molds, Bar- Amotz creates tiny worlds, seemingly from European landscapes: forests, lakes and snow-capped mountains, as well as animals trapped in mounds of
color, forming a duality of joyful colorfulness and a tough reality.
Combining precious metals with synthetic materials and readymade die-cut objects, Bar-Amotz crafts miniature worlds that look as if they were taken from pictures of European landscapes: woods, lakes, and snowy mountains. These images, like the pastoral vistas she « stains, » express longing for a lost memory. They represent the diasporic European culture that Zionist Israeli society has suppressed and erased in its endeavor to create a new culture. Striving to restore something of that erased memory in her works, Bar-Amotz is well aware that they are created in quite a different cultural environment. This is evidenced by the works’ crowded aesthetic, which stems from an observation of Israeli public space – the tar, the overly-colorful palette, the commercial signs, the noise and the over-decorativeness. The jewelry landscapes are populated with animals from « over there, » such as swans, bears and rabbits. Circus animals like elephants and lions are ensnared in a tangle of colorful balloons and lights, while others are drowning in a mound of paint or trapped among trees and shrubs that prevent them from moving. Under a deceptive guise of carnivalesque vibrancy, these animals are deeply stuck in the reality of their existence.
Iris Fishof , Curator of the exhibition

Shirly Bar-Amotz: Happy Days – pendant

Shirly Bar-Amotz  Brooch: From the series “Happy Days” 2012  Sterling silver, brass, Teflon plating, oxide, pearls, coral gems, epoxy resin, epoxy chips, Acrylic paint  

Shirly Bar-Amotz  – Brooch: From the series “Happy Days” 2012  Sterling silver, brass, Teflon plating, pearls, zircon gem, epoxy resin, Acrylic paint

Shirly Bar-Amotz  Brooch: From the series “Happy Days” 2012  Sterling silver, brass, Teflon plating, pearls, zircon gems, epoxy resin, Acrylic paint

Shirly Bar-Amotz  Brooch: Weed (wild plant) 2011  Silver and copper, Synthetic pearls, Epoxy, Epoxy chips 

 

 

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