Ori Gersht

Last updated
Ori Gersht
Born1967
NationalityBritish Israeli
Known for photography

Ori Gersht (born 1967) is an Israeli fine art photographer. He is a professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Kent, England. [1]

Contents

Biography

Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv. He graduated in Photography, Film and Video from University of Westminster, London and studied for an M.A. in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.

Art career

Gersht has exhibited widely in museums and galleries since the early 1990s. He is represented by Angles Gallery in Los Angeles, CRG Gallery in New York, Ben Brown Fine Arts in London, and Noga Gallery in Tel Aviv. In 2012, Gersht's show History Repeating was mounted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [2]

Artistic themes

Gersht engages the themes of life, death, violence, and beauty. His photographs and films transcribe images of sites of historical significance—the Judean Desert, Sarajevo, Auschwitz, the Galicia region of Ukraine, the Lister Route in the Pyrenees (on which Walter Benjamin made his ill-fated exodus from Nazi-occupied France)—into ciphers of psychological disruption. Such scenes may not seem out of the ordinary unto themselves, but, through the artist’s focused attention and treatment they evoke the emotional resonance of what has transpired—most often, violence, and, more significantly, the ghosts of war’s most egregious detritus, its refugees. Pervasive in Gersht’s work is the landscape, as a place, an idea, and an art historical trope. His films and photographs may be compared to paintings in their display—from their unhindered access (no Plexiglas separates their surfaces from the viewer) to the frames surrounding the monitors on which the films often play. Moreover, the vistas and horizons of, for instance, "Between Places" (1998–2000), "White Noise" (1999–2000), "The Clearing/Liquidation" (2005), and "Evaders" (2009), recall Romantic depictions of the sublime. They conjure precedents in both photography, such as the vistas of Andreas Gursky and the landscapes of the American South by Sally Mann, and painting, by J .M. W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, and even Mark Rothko.[ original research? ]

In his still life series Gersht investigated the relationships between photography, technology and optical perception, at a pivotal moment in the history of photography where digital technology both threatens a crisis and promises a breakthrough. Research into the early history of the medium of photography is brought together with theoretical discourse, creating, still image and films that (literally) explode the genre of still life, the beautiful and destructive results captured using cutting-edge technology. In "Pomegranate", a film that references Juan Sanchez Cotan’s 17th-century still life and Harold Edgerton’s stroboscopic photography, a high velocity bullet flies across the frame in slow motion and obliterates a suspended pomegranate fruit, bursting it open and wheeling it slowly into the air like a smashed violated mouth spraying seeds. A peaceful image is transformed into bloodshed, and a dialogue is established between stillness and motion, peace and violence.

Gersht’s photographs and films provide a meditation on life, loss, destiny and chance. Allusions to the catastrophic violence of the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the suicide bombs that Gersht anticipated during his childhood in Israel can all be found in this work. As such, it reminds us of our past, present, and future, and, above all, the fragility of life itself.

Awards and recognitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ziv Koren</span> Israeli photographer

Ziv Koren is an Israeli photojournalist, a representative of "Polaris Images" photo agency. Koren is most noted for documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, IDF operations, and the IDF special forces units "Shayetet 13", "Duvdevan", "YAMAM", and "Sayeret Matkal".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Campana brothers</span> Brazilian furniture designers

The Campana Brothers, consisting of Humberto Campana and Fernando Campana (1961–2022) are Brazilian furniture designers.

Avner Ben-Gal is an international painter and artist, working mainly from Tel Aviv, Israel. His works depict various intense, often neglected locations such as agricultural fields, prisons and smoky interiors, whereby theatrical scenes play out. The scenes present ghostly, rough hewn and often low life figures that are bare and hardened. The parallel between Ben-Gal's raw way of painting and his tough, ambiguous subject matter allows a unique intensity within his paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yuval Yairi</span>

Yuval Yairi is an Israeli artist, using photography, drawing and video. Yairi Studied visual communication at the WIZO College Haifa (1984-1988), was the director of a design studio in Jerusalem (1988-1999), produced and directed short films and documentaries until 2004. Since 2004 Yairi devotes his work to research and artistic activity, primarily in mediums of photography, drawing and video. The subjects of Yairi's work relate to Places, and his gaze - whether it's a historical place, cultural, personal or political - explores these places in context of memory. A Leper Hospital or a writer's library, an abandoned Arab village, a cheap hotel-room or a museum undergoing renovations - transform through his personal perspective, of deconstructing and recomposing spaces, times and events. Yairi's works are exhibited in museums, galleries and festivals in Israel and abroad, and are in public and private collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruti Sela</span> Israeli video artist

Ruti Sela, is a video artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hila Lulu Lin</span> Israeli multi-disciplinary artist

Hila Lulu Lin is an Israeli multi-disciplinary artist, engaged in painting, cinema, poetry, sculpture, visual arts, photography, performance and video art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy Ben-Ner</span>

Guy Ben-Ner is an Israeli video artist. He lives and works in Tel Aviv, Berlin and New York City.

Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere, known as J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, was a Nigerian photographer known for his work with unique hairstyles found in Nigeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michal Rovner</span> Israeli contemporary artist

Michal Rovner, also known as Michal Rovner Hammer, is an Israeli contemporary artist, she is known for her video, photo, and cinema artwork. Rovner is internationally known with exhibitions at major museums, including the Louvre (2011) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2002).

Kevin Francis Gray is an Irish artist living and working in Canterbury and Pietrasanta, Italy. Hedi Slimane and Howard Bilton are both collectors of his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orit Ishay</span> Israeli artist and lecturer in photography (born 1961)

Orit Ishay is an Israeli artist working in photography, video and installation. She is also a lecturer in photography. Ishay's art examines the interrelation between man and place and possible systems of representation, while addressing questions pertaining to social and mental issues through temporal and spatial motifs. Her work is usually accompanied by theoretical research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelika Sher</span> Lithuanian-born Israeli photographer (born 1969)

Angelika Sher is a Lithuanian-born Israeli photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miki Kratsman</span>

Miki Kratsman is an Israeli photographer, photojournalist and activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Adika</span> Israeli photographer and educator

David Adika is an Israeli photographer and educator.

Sharon Yaari is an Israeli photographer.

Nira Pereg is a visual artist. She was born in Tel Aviv. She lived in Jerusalem for a short time, where she graduated with an MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Shenkar College.

Tal Shochat is an Israeli photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya Zack</span> Israeli artist

Maya Zack is an artist-filmmaker who creates video art and installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gaston Zvi Ickowicz</span> Israeli artist

Gastón Zvi Ickowicz is an Israeli visual artist living and working in Tel Aviv.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Igor Zeiger</span> Uzbekistani-Israeli artist and curator

Igor Zeiger, is an Uzbekistan-born Israeli Italian artist and curator.

References

  1. Ori Gersht, UCA
  2. Beauty, Tender and Fleeting, Amid History’s Ire
  3. "War blossoms into art: Ori Gersht at the Imperial War Museum – in pictures". The Guardian . 24 January 2012. Retrieved 21 May 2012.

Further reading