Yonatan Geron at Semel

Artist: Yonatan Geron

Exhibition title: A Retrospective

Curated by: Naama Arad

Venue: Semel, Ramat Gan, Israel

Date: April 24 – June 24, 2023

Photography: ©Tal Nisim / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Semel, Ramat Gan

Yonatan Geron (b. , London, England) is one of the most interesting and unique artists in our local art scene. This exhibition, which is his first comprehensive show, brings together works created over almost forty years into one small and symbolic space. It explores his unique approach to space-time relations, starting with small scribbles he made as a toddler and culminating in installations that span across entire rooms.

Just as Geron’s body of work showcases a wide range of sizes and dimensions, this exhibition seeks to adopt a flexible approach in contrast to the fixed format of a retrospective presentation. Indeed, the necessity of fitting decades of artistic creation into Semel’s petite space, led Geron to invent a series of new “solutions” for display.

In this case, the term retrospective does not confer importance to the artist’s career or public recognition, but refers to a continuous creative process that stretches over a lifetime. Over the years, Geron has created in a variety of fields and media, including painting, sculpture, photography, collage, printmaking, installation, as well as electricity and sound. Among other objects, he often creates environments with mental qualities that envelop the viewer from all sides. These include performative rooms that produce a highly sensory experience characterized by a sense of disturbance and uncertainty in the human perceptual system.

Through the construction of entrances and exits, blocks and openings, Geron invites the viewer to surrender to the disorientation inherent in the familiar and the everyday, and to move within transformative spaces rich with inventions and illusions. A journey through his unique world draws us into a synthetic bodiliness that resonates with the peculiar reality to which we are confined; There I heard a fluttering ceiling throbbing to the beat of invertebrate machines.

-Naama Arad