Sunflowers (2024)
Duo exhibition with Uri Weinstein
Duo exhibition with Uri Weinstein
Parterre Projects, Tel Aviv
curator: Roy Brand
curator: Roy Brand
Sunflowers, 2024
"Sunflowers" is a duo exhibition featuring a selection of drawings, sculptures, and a video work created during the first half of 2024; in the midst of an ongoing disaster, on the brink of an abyss. Karen Dolev and Uri Weinstein, a couple who live together and share a studio, present works that evoke a nostalgic longing for an unfulfilled promise about the future. This longing carries a sense of disappointment, but also embraces the beauty and pleasure inherent in longing itself. Dolev's works are imbued with a nostalgic haze and youthful innocence, while Weinstein dramatizes scenes from popular culture, focusing on moments of magic and embarrassment, with theatrical tension—frozen in time.
The exhibition takes its thematic cue from the sunflower, named for its unique heliotropic ability to track the sun’s trajectory across the sky. The works included in the exhibition capture moments in time and explore the passage of time itself. In Hebrew etymology, the term "Hamaniya" (sunflower) incorporates "Nehiya" (longing), suggesting a journey toward the sun, imbued with cyclic passion that fades and returns each day. The yellow, burnt, tanned flowers, adorned with their distinctive animal-like seed teeth, yearn for the sun every day anew. This longing metaphorically parallels the enduring struggle of Sisyphus, persistently rolling his boulder upward to the top of the mountain. Yet, the sun is different every day; and one might even envision Sisyphus as happy.
Text by Roy Brand
The exhibition takes its thematic cue from the sunflower, named for its unique heliotropic ability to track the sun’s trajectory across the sky. The works included in the exhibition capture moments in time and explore the passage of time itself. In Hebrew etymology, the term "Hamaniya" (sunflower) incorporates "Nehiya" (longing), suggesting a journey toward the sun, imbued with cyclic passion that fades and returns each day. The yellow, burnt, tanned flowers, adorned with their distinctive animal-like seed teeth, yearn for the sun every day anew. This longing metaphorically parallels the enduring struggle of Sisyphus, persistently rolling his boulder upward to the top of the mountain. Yet, the sun is different every day; and one might even envision Sisyphus as happy.
Text by Roy Brand
Installation views by Daniel Hanoch
