Netally Schlosser at Dvir Gallery

Artist: Netally Schlosser

Exhibition title: Red Sun

Venue: Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

Date: December 22, 2022 – January 28, 2023

Photography: Elad Sarig / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dvir Gallery

Netally Schlosser, mainly known for her paintings, has since 2018, dedicated her practice to a new, ambitious and experimental project, titled “Symmetry and Stone,” in which she confronts ancient archeological and geological materials with the most advanced technologies of our time. The project started from a stone Schlosser found on the banks of Yarmouk River, a debris of an archeological near-by dig. Netally Schlosser scanned the stone and digitally cut the 3D model in the middle, as if to find its heart. She then symmetrically mirrored half of it and assembled the two parts, creating one entity which she then printed using a 3D printer. The result not only showed the inherent symmetry of all elements of nature but also, through the unification of the symmetrical parts, made a face emerge, transforming the stone into a figurine. The abstraction in nature, when symmetrically reversed, became figurative. The incision the artist makes in the stone is a “gate to ancient ritual realms.” The symmetry it exerts releases the ancient information, the details or knowledge embedded in the stone and compressed in it: “Hyper- information with inconceivable power and age,” Schlosser writes.

Two works in the exhibition mark further steps: an oil painting in 3D printing and a stone slide in symmetry. The stone slide is based on scientific processes that take place in the rock deformation laboratory of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Ben Gurion University. The slide conveys the information of the stone in a microscopic configuration and to this, in cooperation with the researchers, Schlosser adds that the symmetry is removed by cutting with a diamond saw. The oil painting in 3D printing is in terms of “entering a new world of painting” for the artist whose practice until now has been painting. This is not a reproduction but a hybrid between actual oil paint and digital brushes that move through the oil, in the thickness of the paint, and expand the practice of painting. This proposal creates a sequence between the dimensions of an oil painting in a digital space that is printed in 3D.