Eran Shakine
Good Morning Mr. Picasso
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ERAN SHAKINE
Good Morning Mr. Picasso
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November-December 2013 Text Ron Bartos English translation Maya Shimony Graphic design Zvika Roitman Design Photography Ran Erde Printed by AR Print Gallery directors Anat Bar Noy and Leore Yahel Ohad Operations and logistics Elli Sahar
Š 2013 All rights reserved to 4
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t the northern edge of Tel Aviv, a huge downward climb separates the street level from the beach. To get to the warm sand, you descend a steep staircase, discovering from its high vantage point a thick, concrete wall dividing the beach into separate realities. Behind the wall lies the Orthodox beach, where men and women bathe separately, on alternating days. Eran Shakine’s new series, “The Rabbi Goes Swimming”, appears to the secular viewer as a vision of some lost collective memory. The ultraorthodox public, familiar and yet mysterious, is shown in an everyday moment, posed between holiness and impurity —concepts that have long since passed from the secular viewer’s world. Shakine portrays the sea as a flat pictorial space, against which he examines his subjects. He does not claim to explain their customs, only his own interest in them. He describes the orthodox man entering the water surreally, floating above it or perhaps sinking below, revealing no illusory depth and no space between spirit and matter, aside from the heavy black brushstrokes describing the material sagging of the heavy black cloth in the purifying water. The black strokes have a calligraphic quality, symbolizing and tracing the figures diving among the waves. Shakine’s second location is a room, seen from above, in which characters sit in different arrangements around a table. The bird’s-eye view could signify surveillance of trapped inmates, or the protective gaze of a higher power, Big Brother of the faithful, who watches for shadowy moments of sin in continuous scrutiny. In another series, Shakine shows a girl lying in bed, surrounded by Hasidim holding hands. A blanket of tears covers her small figure, invoking the forms of traditional Jewish 19th century paper cutouts. The fabric’s pattern and tasseled edges lend the scene a folkloric-oriental mood, and separate the masculine world of tradition from the feminine, girlish figure. A figure’s profile stands watching in the bottom right corner; an outsider inserted into the scene to give the viewer emotional reference. As many Renaissance painters did before him, Shakine uses his own figure as model and becomes a witness to the painting’s events. Shakine’s dialog with the ultra-orthodox world has been an ongoing theme in his painting, and has been expressed in previous series (such as “Sabbath Match”, 2008). It expresses a persisting curiosity in this parallel world, and speaks to issues of Jewish identity and of tradition’s place in our ever-changing society.
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Picasso at the studio
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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The Blue Period, 1901 2012, Oil sticks 21x30 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 24
2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso’s women
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso at home
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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with freinds
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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Picasso & Braque, Monmarte 1907 2012, Oil on canvas 98x430 cm
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