Naomi Leshem “Centered”

Andrea Meislin Gallery

poster for Naomi Leshem “Centered”

This event has ended.

Andrea Meislin Gallery presents Centered, an exhibition of new photographs by Israeli artist Naomi Leshem. This solo show—the artist’s second with the gallery—will run from Thursday, January 9 to Saturday, February 22, 2014. Signed and editioned copies of the accompanying publication will be available.

Centered comprises 10 photographs, each of a solitary figure – five male, five female—placed in a challenging physical or psychological situation by Leshem. Each was thus forced to confront and cope with the difficult position by finding a sense of order and balance; they each find a way to be centered. While Leshem photographs the figures in stasis, this deceptive calmness is reached only after much struggle.

These “struggle to surrender” scenarios address and shed light on multiple issues, namely the questions of gender stereotypes, of the role of the individual in a larger societal context, and of the relevance of a physical place to one’s identity.

Naomi Leshem subsequently traveled around the world, asking strangers for their impressions of the photographs; these foreigners then wrote their responses in their native languages, by hand. Both the sense of calm and the questions brought up by the ten photographs in the series are further reinforced by the abstracted texts and the mystery of what they may mean.

Leshem created a project that is at once international and local, providing a global context that has become increasingly important and inescapable in an ever-changing and complex world. Naomi Leshem’s pairing of the photographs with personal and international responses establishes that contemporary art is often the best conduit to make sense of these changes.

Naomi Leshem was born in 1963, and lives and works in Kiryat Ono, near Tel Aviv. She graduated with a degree in photography from Hadassah College in Jerusalem. She is a recipient of the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Leshem has exhibited her works throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. Her photographs are in the collections of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Norton Museum of Art, Florida; the Shpilman Institute for photography; along with many notable private collections.

[Image: NAOMI LESHEM “Daniel, from the series Centered” (2013) Archival pigment print, 35.43 x 35.43 in., 90 x 90 cm]

Media

Schedule

from January 09, 2014 to February 22, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-01-09 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Naomi Leshem

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