Culture
"The House": Solo Exhibition by Ruth Kadari from 6 September at at the "Hamazrek" Gallery , Tel Aviv
"The House": A Journey into the Depths of the Inner Landscape of Ruth Kadari - Solo Exhibition, Festive Opening: Saturday, 6.9.2025 at 12:00 at the "Hamazrek" Gallery, 5 Shvil HaTnufa, Tel Aviv. Artistic Direction: Lev Kiperman
In Ruth Kadari's solo exhibition, an intense
and semi-abstract pictorial language unfolds, seeking to redefine the concept
of "landscape"—not as an external landscape, but as an internal
landscape of consciousness, memory, and disruption. Broken lines, colorful
blotches, and changing textures create a charged visual world, in which house,
tree, path, or window are not stable objects but hints, riddles, and illusions.
The exhibition presents to us the rich and diverse
artistic world of Ruth Kadari, a unique artist who paints out of a fascinating
mix of deep internal observation, personal memories, and impressions from her
surroundings. Kadari’s paintings, despite their seemingly figurative presence,
transcend the bounds of realistic depiction and burst into surrealistic and
abstract dimensions, inviting the viewer on an intimate journey into her
artistic soul.
Ruth Kadari, a veteran and respected artist,
has been working for years from a continuous exploration of personal and
collective memory. In her works, one can discern a deep emotional gaze, but
also a high formal awareness. She corresponds with traditions of modernist and
abstract painting—from the German Expressionists, through Paul Klee and Joan
Miró, to the symbolic language of Anna Ticho and Jakob Steinhardt—yet maintains
a distinct personal voice, charged with local sensitivity and a desire to
reorganize reality.
For her, creation is first and foremost a
process of investigation and discovery. Her works are not only visual
creations, but a kind of visual personal diary, reflecting her thoughts,
emotions, and perceptions of the world. She possesses a rare ability to
translate her inner complexity into a rich visual language, combining textures,
colors, and forms in an intuitive and compelling manner. Kadari does not shy
away from experimenting with different materials and techniques; she creates
dynamic compositions that combine flowing lines with dramatic color fields,
fragmented figures with dreamlike landscapes. In her works, a tension is
evident—between order and disorder, between the reflection of reality and its
distortion—echoing the dynamics of the human psyche.
The imagery in her paintings—houses, trees,
paths, fields—sometimes disintegrates into lines and shapes, and sometimes
reassembles into an almost-childlike, almost-mythical form. The landscape, its
houses, its paths, and its objects are not just representations of physical
space, but expressions of a psychological space—between disintegration and
order, between memory and fiction. Kadri moves between drawing and painting,
between hint and fragmentation, between vivid colorfulness and monochromatic
flatness, and sometimes uses duplication: multiplicity as emotional overload,
as a story not fully told.
One of the central recurring motifs in Kadari’s
work is the house—not necessarily as an exact architectural representation, but
as a symbol of internal space, of a place of memory, belonging, and security—or
alternatively, insecurity and disintegration. Kadari's houses change: sometimes
they stand firm and protected, sometimes they are fragmented, floating, or
merge with the landscape in an almost organic manner. The motif of the broken
and rebuilt house echoes the works of early Cubist and Expressionist artists,
who also explored the decomposition and re-composition of forms to express
complex perceptions of reality. A certain connection can be seen to the works
of Georges Braque, who, at the beginning of his Cubist phase, painted houses
and landscapes broken into simple geometry, emphasizing multiple perspectives.
Kadari's color palette spans a wide range—from
dark and deep tones to light and transparent hues. She uses color not just for
depiction, but as a powerful tool of emotional expression. Her brushstrokes,
sometimes gentle and hovering and sometimes rough and dramatic, create rich
textures that give her works a physical and three-dimensional quality. The
emphasis on texture and the materiality of the paint connects her works to
those of Expressionist artists who viewed the material itself as a central
means of expression.
In this exhibition, Kadari offers an internal
map—subjective, vibrating—into her world and into places that were and are no
longer, or that perhaps never were. Her works echo images of displacement, of
wandering, of a house that was destroyed and built again—not as architecture,
but as memory and as a wish. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to dive into
Ruth Kadari’s unique world. Each work is a gateway to a different journey,
inviting the viewer to connect with their own emotions, to unfold their imagination,
and to find points of connection between their inner world and the artist’s
rich one.
Curatorial Text: Nirit Dahan
Closing:
30.9.2025
Exhibition visiting hours: Tue–Thu 12:00–17:30
Friday and Saturday: 11:00–14:00
In collaboration with "Kan" Magazine – Israeli Reality in Art