NYAB Event - Esther Naor “Aftermath”

Esther Naor “Aftermath”

57 STUX + HALLER Gallery

[Image: Esther Naor "Untitled" (2016) Dye sublimation on Chromaluxe metal panel, 35x53 in.]

This event has ended.

“… in this unstable age, Naor distills our anxieties
into a public confession of the world’s
afflicted, lonely, redemptive common ground”—Stefan Stux

Stux + Haller Gallery presents “Aftermath,” a solo show of new works by Tel Aviv-based artist Esther Naor, which explores and investigates the themes and consequences of immigration, loneliness, personal and psychic pain, the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, France and San Bernardino, California and the current global refugee crisis.

“What has attracted me to the work of Esther Naor from the beginning are the recurring intensely personal narratives, at times unsettling, that she so convincingly, skillfully, and surprisingly interweaves within her artwork,” said Stux, director of the historically well-known Stux Gallery, which relocated from Chelsea to 57th Street in the fall of 2014. Shortly thereafter, the venerated Stephen Haller Gallery, also formerly of Chelsea, affiliated with Stux on 57th Street, forming Stux + Haller Gallery. “While her narratives may be personal, to me, somehow, they curiously mirror universal resonances. Ultimately, it is intertwined art to leave you moved, unsettled, questioning.”

The “Aftermath” exhibition of 2016 will continue to explore themes that Naor has investigated in recent years, as shaped in her “Side Effects” series from 2012 and in “A Sudden Dark Breeze over My Uncovered Skin” from 2015. “In a way, the “Aftermath” exhibition could be considered the third episode of this “trilogy,” said Naor. “The first episode was very personal and dealt with my own trauma, identity and biography, the second was more general, borrowing figures from a painting by Goya, instead of my own, and depicting a scene of lifesaving in undefined site and situation. The “Aftermath” works further develop this theme, defamiliarizing and distancing myself from the situation in order to address more universal pains and anxieties, partly under the influence of the images I have been seeing in the last months in the news of refugees in Europe and the recent terror attacks in Paris and California.”

The main three-dimensional work included in “Aftermath” will be a life-size sculpture based on the figure below the witches in Goya’s painting “Flight of the Witches.” “The ready-made element in my new sculpture will substitute the white blanket above the figure in the painting,” Naor said. “It will be a thermal emergency blanket, which is a thin foil developed by NASA, coated silver on one side, and gold on the other side. This blanket has been seen often in the news lately, especially upon the terror attack in Paris.”

The exhibition’s two-dimensional works include a series of 10 photographs, 35 inches x 53 inches in size, in which two layers of images are superimposed: the thermal blanket and a few scenes that Naor photographed in 2014, which depict people relating to each other in an atmosphere of anxiety. These photo works, printed on glossy aluminum, will surround and exist in dialogue with the central sculpture.

“Humanity is currently facing a new phase of violence and upheaval; of course, our history has known endless wars and catastrophes, some caused by nature and some by our own hands. Even so, I feel that the individual today lives in a state of constant anxiety — a relentless fear of the unknown and the evil that can strike any moment, anywhere, without early warning,” said Naor. “My new works relate to this unstable and frightening situation (known to me very well, being Israeli) and address issues such as loneliness, pain, violence and ways of coping with such events and emotions from the point of view of the individual.”

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 a career in engineering and computers, she moved on to art studies at the Midrasha Art School in Kfar Saba and at several artists’ studios in Israel. Naor works mainly in the mediums of sculpture, photography, and video. Naor lives and works in Israel. “Although I focus on installations, my work also involves video and photography. I’m interested in issues of identity, social behavior, and physical and mental borders, but I always take something very personal as a point of departure,” says Naor. “Such points have been my personal family history and its immigration from Iraq and integration in Israel, the tension and conflicts involved in my being both a mother and an artist, and personal traumas which influenced my artistic work.”