View, 2018, Vardi Bobrow

What

Nylon fibers

Who

Vardi Bobrow, b. 1959

Why

“The work View is the result of recurrent visits to the long-established brush factory on Kibbutz Ruhama, and of a prolonged work process. Over a four-year period, I repeatedly visited the factory, becoming acquainted with the workers, the machines, and the production processes, and above all with the unique products manufactured at the site: brushes for industrial, agricultural, domestic or personal use; soft, colorful brushes, with long or short bristles. My enchantment with the wide range of materials, textures, and designs gave rise to a series of works in different mediums.

My work process involved laborious manual techniques that resonate with production processes at the factory – building on the qualities of the original materials to create objects whose size and shape are distorted and dysfunctional, while forming images imbued with beauty. Brushes identified with processes of cleaning, removal and polishing become refined images without losing their original character and qualities. In fact, I attempted to expose the beauty embodied in the brushes. The same brush that gathers dirt and debris modestly conceals the potential for great beauty, which I wish to bring to life.

The images created by means of the industrial, manmade brushes are in fact borrowed from the natural world, and relate to its organic or sublime beauty. The exposure of the ‘beautiful’ is especially notable given the gap between the simple, seemingly inferior, banal and functional object and the ‘poetic’ or ‘heroic’ images that I seek to create.”

Where

On display at the Rothschild Gallery, Tel Aviv Biennale of Crafts & Design, MUZA – Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.