BIO
Curriculum Vitae
Esther Naor was born in 1961 in Israel.
She graduated from the department of Civil Engineering at Haifa Technion Institute, Israel, and the department of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Following 12 years of a career in engineering and computers in the high-tech industry, she began art studies at the Midrasha Art School in Kfar Saba and at several artists' studios in Israel. Since the year 2001 she has been dedicating herself to art, working mainly in the mediums of sculpture, photography, and video.
She lives and works in Savion, Israel.
Selected exhibitions
June 2012
Night of Festivals, international multi-media festival, Old Market Square, Nottingham, England
May 2012
Fresh Paint 5, the Tel Aviv Art Fair
Hidden Cities, group show, Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association, Istanbul, Turkey
2012 fashionSCAPES, the 7th Festival of Arts and Fashion (FAT), Toronto
Director: Vanja Vasic
2012 Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange Bed Fellows, group show, A.I.R
Gallery, New York
Curator: Catherine J. Morris
2012 Hidden & Forbidden Identities, group show, Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice
Curators: Luca Curci, Elis Saint Juste
2011 You Are All Red, and So Very White, installation/solo show, Florentin 45
Gallery, Tel Aviv
2011 A Season in Paradise, group show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv
Curator: Irena Gordon
2011 Video projections weekend, Centro Labicano Arte Contemporanea (CLAC),
Rome
2011 Infinite Spaces (part two), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Palazzo Orsini, Bomarzo, Italy
Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi
2011 Inter/National Members Exhibition, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York
Curator: Susanne Altmann
2010 Infinite Spaces (part one), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Museo della Civiltà Romana, Rome
Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi
2010 Solo show, Berliner Liste Art Fair, Berlin
2010 Open Portfolio, salon and group exhibition, Chelsea Museum, New York
Curator: Elga Wimmer
2010 Houses in the Boulevard, open-air group exhibition, Rothschild Avenue,
Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Ilan Wizgan
2010 Reawakening, group exhibition, Lana Santorelli Gallery, New York
2009 Tempus Arti 2009, Landen, Linter and Zoutleeuw, Belgium
Curators: Dirk Lambrechts and Tim Cleuren. Artistic Advisor: Jan Hoet
2009 15th Biennial of Cerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal
Curators: Fátima Lambert (Portugal), Paulo Reis (Brésil) and Orlando Brito-
Ginório (Spain).
2009 Contemporary Expressions, international photography group exhibition,
Pen & Brush Gallery, New York
Curator: Daile Kaplan
2009 The 8th A.I.R. Gallery Biennial, New York, USA
Curator: Lilly Wei
2008 International photography exhibition on the theme of "Violence against
Women", Queen Sofía Center, Valencia, Spain
2008 Home, installation, Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv, Israel
.
2007 Bread and Roses (Group Show), Minshar Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Nir Nader
2007 Mask – Identity (Group Show), Gebo gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Nurit Tenne
2006 Urban Tales, time based installations on Rothschild Ave., Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Ilan Wizgan
2005 100 Artists for A Museum (Group Show), Casoria Museum of
Contemporary Art, Casoria, Italy
Curator: Antonio Manfredi
2005 Unclaimed Luggage (Group Show), Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta
2004 OPENASIA (Group Show), Venice Lido, Italy
Curator: Chang Tsong-zung
2004 Nomadifesta / Pack Your Suitcase (Group Show), Nicosia, Cyprus
Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta
Luce Irigaray based her feminist theory on the corporeal body and on its sexual specificity as consciousness and as an entity, both of which go beyond cultural discourse. Esther Naor relates to Irigaray's philosophy and at the same time expresses the manner in which she experiences her body as a woman and as an artist. Her work deals with the duality of control and the loss of it, with the beautiful and the abject, with the logo-centric white and the spreading passionate red, with the pure and the blemished and the inherent tensions between them. The duality presented by the work is both a trap and an introduction to another repressed and ambiguous world, centered around threat and fear, sexuality and eroticism. In Naor's work, expressiveness meets the limitations of clean aesthetics to create a space in which everything is turned from the inside to the outside. The resultant effect evokes an experience of the suppressed, of the “Other” - an “Other” in a continuous search for her own voice.
Esther Naor was born in 1961 in Israel.
She graduated from the department of Civil Engineering at Haifa Technion Institute, Israel, and the department of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Following 12 years of a career in engineering and computers in the high-tech industry, she began art studies at the Midrasha Art School in Kfar Saba and at several artists' studios in Israel. Since the year 2001 she has been dedicating herself to art, working mainly in the mediums of sculpture, photography, and video.
She lives and works in Savion, Israel.
Selected exhibitions
June 2012
Night of Festivals, international multi-media festival, Old Market Square, Nottingham, England
May 2012
Fresh Paint 5, the Tel Aviv Art Fair
Hidden Cities, group show, Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association, Istanbul, Turkey
2012 fashionSCAPES, the 7th Festival of Arts and Fashion (FAT), Toronto
Director: Vanja Vasic
2012 Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange Bed Fellows, group show, A.I.R
Gallery, New York
Curator: Catherine J. Morris
2012 Hidden & Forbidden Identities, group show, Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice
Curators: Luca Curci, Elis Saint Juste
2011 You Are All Red, and So Very White, installation/solo show, Florentin 45
Gallery, Tel Aviv
2011 A Season in Paradise, group show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv
Curator: Irena Gordon
2011 Video projections weekend, Centro Labicano Arte Contemporanea (CLAC),
Rome
2011 Infinite Spaces (part two), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Palazzo Orsini, Bomarzo, Italy
Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi
2011 Inter/National Members Exhibition, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York
Curator: Susanne Altmann
2010 Infinite Spaces (part one), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Museo della Civiltà Romana, Rome
Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi
2010 Solo show, Berliner Liste Art Fair, Berlin
2010 Open Portfolio, salon and group exhibition, Chelsea Museum, New York
Curator: Elga Wimmer
2010 Houses in the Boulevard, open-air group exhibition, Rothschild Avenue,
Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Ilan Wizgan
2010 Reawakening, group exhibition, Lana Santorelli Gallery, New York
2009 Tempus Arti 2009, Landen, Linter and Zoutleeuw, Belgium
Curators: Dirk Lambrechts and Tim Cleuren. Artistic Advisor: Jan Hoet
2009 15th Biennial of Cerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal
Curators: Fátima Lambert (Portugal), Paulo Reis (Brésil) and Orlando Brito-
Ginório (Spain).
2009 Contemporary Expressions, international photography group exhibition,
Pen & Brush Gallery, New York
Curator: Daile Kaplan
2009 The 8th A.I.R. Gallery Biennial, New York, USA
Curator: Lilly Wei
2008 International photography exhibition on the theme of "Violence against
Women", Queen Sofía Center, Valencia, Spain
2008 Home, installation, Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv, Israel
.
2007 Bread and Roses (Group Show), Minshar Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Nir Nader
2007 Mask – Identity (Group Show), Gebo gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Nurit Tenne
2006 Urban Tales, time based installations on Rothschild Ave., Tel Aviv, Israel
Curator: Ilan Wizgan
2005 100 Artists for A Museum (Group Show), Casoria Museum of
Contemporary Art, Casoria, Italy
Curator: Antonio Manfredi
2005 Unclaimed Luggage (Group Show), Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta
2004 OPENASIA (Group Show), Venice Lido, Italy
Curator: Chang Tsong-zung
2004 Nomadifesta / Pack Your Suitcase (Group Show), Nicosia, Cyprus
Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta
Luce Irigaray based her feminist theory on the corporeal body and on its sexual specificity as consciousness and as an entity, both of which go beyond cultural discourse. Esther Naor relates to Irigaray's philosophy and at the same time expresses the manner in which she experiences her body as a woman and as an artist. Her work deals with the duality of control and the loss of it, with the beautiful and the abject, with the logo-centric white and the spreading passionate red, with the pure and the blemished and the inherent tensions between them. The duality presented by the work is both a trap and an introduction to another repressed and ambiguous world, centered around threat and fear, sexuality and eroticism. In Naor's work, expressiveness meets the limitations of clean aesthetics to create a space in which everything is turned from the inside to the outside. The resultant effect evokes an experience of the suppressed, of the “Other” - an “Other” in a continuous search for her own voice.
RHIZOME ACTIVITIES
fresh paint 5
Dates:
Tue May 15, 2012 20:00 - Sat May 19, 2012
Location:
Tel Aviv,
Israel
Fresh Paint contemporary art fair is Israel’s largest, most influential annual art event. The fair is held each year in a surprising, new location in Tel Aviv – the beating heart of the Israeli cultural world, and attracts over 30,000 visitors. The fair brings together all the leading galleries and significant forces of the Israeli art scene, collaborates with all the Israeli museums, and enjoys the support of leading international art institutions.
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Esther Naor
I Am Forever Fog, 2012
Soft wax, variable dimensions
The new series of works by artist Esther Naor deals with pain and fear through the genre of portrait. She sculpts heads with anonymous facial features, with a special technique that uses soft wax to fake marble. The head sculptures, reminiscent of classic sculpture portraits, range from the perfect to the wounded and bleeding. Several ones are reminiscent of works of art that were made as a reaction to violent events, such as Picasso's Guernica, or Tumarkin's wounded figures. Except that Naor doesn't react to a concrete reality; she relates to a fragile, threatened universal existence, under constant pain and anxiety. Naor wishes to grab these feelings and turn them into physical bodies, a sort of Voodoo puppets whose role has been reversed and aim now to release the body from the pain, to allow an external look at it, to rediscover the sense of compassion and suggest consolation and healing.
The series in question here is a continuation and development of the installation in the Florentin 45 gallery, earlier this year, which used fleshy and bloody images in contrast to pure white gauze sails. The aesthetic aspect was one of undefined internal organs which were removed from the body, perhaps in an act of violence, perhaps in an act of healing. The recent works, however, are figurative and concrete, in black, white and shades of gray in between, unlike the dominant red in the previous installation. Paradoxically, the monochromatic blurring of the facial traits gives each figure its own and unique identity, despite the generic and identical point of start. The unique and generic (hence the individual and public) merge into one multi-faceted identity who wishes to gather the pieces and redefine itself.
********************************************
Esther Naor
I Am Forever Fog, 2012
Soft wax, variable dimensions
The new series of works by artist Esther Naor deals with pain and fear through the genre of portrait. She sculpts heads with anonymous facial features, with a special technique that uses soft wax to fake marble. The head sculptures, reminiscent of classic sculpture portraits, range from the perfect to the wounded and bleeding. Several ones are reminiscent of works of art that were made as a reaction to violent events, such as Picasso's Guernica, or Tumarkin's wounded figures. Except that Naor doesn't react to a concrete reality; she relates to a fragile, threatened universal existence, under constant pain and anxiety. Naor wishes to grab these feelings and turn them into physical bodies, a sort of Voodoo puppets whose role has been reversed and aim now to release the body from the pain, to allow an external look at it, to rediscover the sense of compassion and suggest consolation and healing.
The series in question here is a continuation and development of the installation in the Florentin 45 gallery, earlier this year, which used fleshy and bloody images in contrast to pure white gauze sails. The aesthetic aspect was one of undefined internal organs which were removed from the body, perhaps in an act of violence, perhaps in an act of healing. The recent works, however, are figurative and concrete, in black, white and shades of gray in between, unlike the dominant red in the previous installation. Paradoxically, the monochromatic blurring of the facial traits gives each figure its own and unique identity, despite the generic and identical point of start. The unique and generic (hence the individual and public) merge into one multi-faceted identity who wishes to gather the pieces and redefine itself.
Night of Festivals, international multi-media festival,
Dates:
Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:20 - Sat Jun 23, 2012
Location:
London,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Night of Festivals 2012 will take place from 21-23 June 2012 with a focused hub of activity in the special surroundings of Nottingham’s Old Market Square – the largest open public square in the UK. The wonderful environment of the Square will be embellished with extraordinary new installations (including the world’s smallest moving image gallery, the ArtReach Nanoplex), a large scale live music stage and Big Screen.
Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange Bed Fellows
Dates:
Wed Mar 28, 2012 13:55 - Sat Apr 21, 2012
Location:
new york,
United States of America
Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange Bed Fellows, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York
Curator: Catherine J. Morris
March 28-April 21
Curator: Catherine J. Morris
March 28-April 21
