Maya Bloch / This Isn’t Happening
Sep 07 – Oct 20, 2012
- Polystyrene , paper, plastic, acrylic paint, 28x45x76 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 150×120 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 150×120 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 109×80 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 150×140 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 130×110 cm.
- Acrylic and ink on canvas, 150×140 cm.
- Acrylic and oil on canvas, 155×130 cm.
- Acrylic on canvas, 150×140 cm.
It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.
– D. W. Winnicott
Maya Bloch’s exhibition, “This Isn’t Happening,” in Sommer Contemporary Art’s Project Room S2 is made up of new large format paintings. Through carefully crafted puddles of acrylic, oil and ink, Bloch depicts figures from found photographs. Bloch paints intuitively until the figures are abstracted, appearing ghostly and weathered like found photographs that have survived a series of traumas.
Since she was a child, Bloch has been interested in sites that express the simultaneity of beauty and anxiety. For example, she describes the cemetery of fallen British soldiers in her hometown of Be’er Sheva as both alienating and a lush oasis. It is one reflection on living amongst the history of others. Bloch says that through glimpsing into others’ lives, one confirms one’s own existence; concurrently, she believes that through entering into one’s inner world, one can cope with anxieties that permeate even the most mundane scenes.
Maya Bloch was born in Be’er Sheva, Israel, in 1978 and currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Tel Aviv University. She has had solo exhibitions at Thierry-Goldberg Gallery, NY, as well as at the Haifa Museum of Art and at Tavi Dresdner Gallery in Tel Aviv. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at PPOW Gallery, New York; Marlborough Gallery, New York; The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY; Artists House, Jerusalem and Petach Tikva Museum in Petach Tikva.