A new solo exhibition by Iddo Markus. The exhibition features an installation comprised of drawings, color sketches, videos, and paintings, all inspired by an old family photo that the artist found in his parents' home.
The exhibition presents an extensive work process that was inspired by the discovery of this photograph, in which the artist exercises various photographic practices like cropping, enlarging, zooming-in, and copying using paint and formats in various sizes. This is Markus’s first exhibition that originates from one single image. It debuts a shift that has taken place in his work from the last couple of years towards a profound exploration of color, form, and image while working with different variations of a single image, as opposed to his series that center around natural scenes or other common threads.
The central piece of this exhibition is a large-scale oil painting of an entire family standing in a group preparing to have their photograph taken. Unlike the photograph, the painting explores more than the group composition. The painting also focuses on the individual human scenes, the painter stands in front of the figures creating a long process of breaking apart and reassembling the image, rather than merely the brief moment of pressing a shutter button.
With the very act of painting, Markus brings back to life the family members who were “frozen in time” at the moment during the Fall of 1979 that the photo was taken. The small paintings in the installation challenge the group photographic act, in which the details are veiled to create a coherent composition. Each portrait undermines the cohesion of the photographed group, looking for the uniqueness of each individual, movement, expression and feeling. Building on the viscosity of oil paint, Markus carries out a deliberate intervention in the group photograph, like a researcher who meticulously observes each individual part. With a keen eye and an expressive hand, he creates singular distortions in each of the figures, disrupting and embedding fictitious elements and unearthing others that lie beneath the surface of the family photo. So, we get to experience both the unifying group expression that is frozen in creating a “familiar” 1970’s family atmosphere, alongside an intimate observation of the individuals, born from the act of painting over time.
Coincidentally, during the preparations for the exhibition, an 8mm film was discovered in the Markus family archive. The film, which will be projected in the exhibition, captures the various figures just seconds before the photograph was taken. The encounter with the moving figures alongside the photo and paintings, transforms the characters into ghostlike figures, imbuing the frozen photo and paintings with life and a mythical quality.
The three mediums – photography, video, and painting – introduce the question of the gaze that establishes an image: what is the relation between the photographer's gaze and that of the painter and what meaning does each visual expression produce? These questions emerge from the artist’s shift between mediums. The uniqueness of the installation lies in its ability to formulate a contemporary position by using the classic painting medium, as Markus has done in the past with large-scale installations of miniatures.
Markus’s works summon the viewers encounters with historical painters like as Velasquez, Ensor, Cézanne, and the Israeli artist, Ori Reisman, who each worked between classicism and abstraction, between realism and expressionism.

Opening reception : Thursday, Sep. 13th at 8 pm

mpefm ISRAEL art press release