3 hours ago
6
ARTICLE AD BOX
That may be a fact of life, but Shish’s gushing passion and fervor, in her art and personality, do one a power of good. Her work is truly a Feast for the Eyes.
By BARRY DAVIS FEBRUARY 12, 2025 04:40
A WORK from Khen Shish's exhibition 'A Feast for the Eyes.'
(photo credit: YIGAL PARDO)
Ever taken a look around you, at the prevailing hue sported by the people on the street, at work, or on public transport? If you have taken a moment to consider the sartorial aesthetics of the people around you, the chances are the predominant color was black or, at best, brown, gray, or dark blue.
Perhaps this is a normal reaction to the existential trials of everyday life or, perhaps, a subconscious desire to blend into the background, not to stick out, and, thereby, possibly avoid danger. It may be down to a primal survival instinct, but it certainly doesn’t do a lot for adding a sense of joie de vivre to quotidian proceedings.
If it’s color you’re after, in full in-your-face, unavoidable sumptuous technicolor brilliance, the self-explanatorily named A Feast for the Eyes exhibition of paintings by Khen Shish, down at the Negev Museum of Art in Beersheba, curated by Ron Bartos, is just the ticket.
Shish is one of our busiest artists, maintaining a packed show schedule at major museums and galleries around the country, with the odd foray to foreign climes. The current spread down south hits you like a breath of joy-inducing, life-affirming air. There is an abundance of color everywhere you look, and mostly in rich cocktail mixes.
And there is just so much to see in each and every work. “Look, this is probably a bird shape,” she exclaims when we get up close to one of the many large canvases on the upper level of the museum. She called this one The Enchanted Forest and Fantastic Beasts. At two meters wide and over one and a half meters high, this makes for a sizable spectacle.
Shish blew into the museum from her home in downtown Tel Aviv like a whirlwind exuding bonhomie and business-like single-mindedness. It was an extraordinarily stormy day down in the Negev, so that fit the meteorological bill. We get straight down to business.
“We painted the wall so it would fit,” she explains as we take a peek at a pair of enormous paintings that resemble eyes, affixed to a generously dimensioned wall on the ground floor, which had been covered in a gorgeous shade of lilac. As you open the double door that leads into the hall, you feel you are being observed by the oval-shaped works. “Yes, it is as if they are looking at us while we look at them,” Shish laughs.
The eyes, as the adage has it, are also the windows to the soul. Shish posits that we may, indeed, be peering through the polychromic scenes, jam-packed with all manner of phantasmagorical creatures, surrounded by vortexes of shapes, motifs, and plentiful daubs and dabs of paint into another domain.
Shish has really gone to town with A Feast for the Eyes. It feels like she simply went into her studio and let rip, allowing anything and everything she has conjured up in her highly fertile imagination to pour out of her, through her brushes, hands, and any other implement she happened to pick up, laying them down on the canvases and sheets of paper that provide the substratum for the works.
There are many thematic allusions in there too. The Garden of Eden naturally springs to mind, particularly in Life Tree, a gargantuan number – the largest of the lot at the museum – which measures nigh on three by four meters. I expressed my surprise at the titular order. “Yes, we have all heard of the Tree of Life, but I wanted the word ‘Life’ to come first,” she expounds with unbridled zest.
Stay updated with the latest news!
Subscribe to The Jerusalem Post Newsletter
An inviting torrent of swirls, curls, and whirls
THERE IS a veritable torrent – albeit an inviting one – of swirls, curls, whirls, and more definable forms all over the place. The suitably ovoid yellow orb in the center has something like a date tree growing up through it with all kinds of fauna sitting, lying, or hovering above the spindly branches.
There’s a horse, snake – a leitmotif of Shish’s offerings – a chameleon, a scorpion, and another undefinable life form, as well as a boat-shaped receptacle for three small white eggs. The tree is topped by a brace of bird heads facing in opposite directions, which lends the piece a sliver of symmetry.
The pair theme recurs in the nether regions of the painting, again featuring creatures of a seemingly ornithological nature. “Look, they are pregnant,” Shish animatedly suggests, pointing to the birds’ bulbous midriffs, each with a necklace-like spiral with dabs that may be foliage. It is hard to tell, and the artist is clearly happy for us to bring our own grasp of the works to the fray.
Many of the paintings clearly demanded a great investment of time and sheer physical effort to produce. It soon transpires that there is even more to them than initially meets the eye and just the surface aesthetics.
“This is a collage,” Shish says as she draws my attention to the fact that many dots and more elongated elements are actually glued to the paper or canvas in question. “And look here, there is a shape here, maybe of a bird! I often paint over an earlier painting or two, so there are layers.” Shish feels that adds to the end product, and not just in terms of physical strata.
“There are always signs of things beneath the surface in my oil paintings.” She refers to her works as living organisms with more than a splash of splendor. “Underneath there are veins and muscles and tendons. And here there is some gold leaf in the contour around the picture, that exalt and glorify it.”
The 54-year-old artist, who has been unfurling her expanding oeuvre to the viewing public for three decades now, clearly has her mind and heart set on ever-loftier matters. I remarked that was reminiscent of the gold leaf elements Gustav Klimt used – copiously – in his Art Nouveau-leaning works, most famously in The Woman in Gold and The Kiss.
Shish initially balks a little at the implied structural comparison to the famous late nineteenth-early twentieth-century Austrian artist, but soon relents. “KIimt? Sure! Anyway, I had an exhibition in Vienna in 2008,” she laughs.
As we walk around the exhibition, I get the feeling that Shish is rediscovering the works as she views them for the umpteenth time. There is an infectious, almost childlike air of enthusiasm about her demeanor. Not that I needed too much prompting. In a side room we come across a double-sided triptych painted on a hinged wooden screen.
As I did a circuit of the exhibition, before Shish’s arrival, I wondered whether there was something on the obverse side and was delighted to find three more works to the rear. “Why not paint on both szides?” she giggles. Indeed.
We come across towering figures with heart-shaped faces, others with torsos that resemble ceramic jars, and countless other forms and modes of expression – in all sorts of configurations, physical and emotional alike. “There is also a lot of sadness around, and that finds its way into my work too. Not everything is glory and joy,” she notes in a rare low-energy moment.
That may be a fact of life, but Shish’s gushing passion and fervor, in her art and personality, do one a power of good. Her work is truly a Feast for the Eyes.
A Feast for the Eyes closes on May 4. For more information: negev-museum.org.il/?lang=en
English (US) ·