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Thursday, April 22, 2004 |
Adi Nis Israeli Art Exhibit
Adi Nes is no Ansel Adams, unless Ansel was also using the geography of the human body to express homoerotic longing. His subjects are fellow members of the Israeli Defense Forces and he poses them in ways which mimic famous sculptures and paintings like The Last Supper and The Pieta. He's showing at San Francisco's Legion of Honor through July 18.
Adi Nes creates photographs of exquisite beauty that combine the documentary drama of everyday life with poetic idealism. Contemporary enactments of the timeless and legendary narratives on which myth relies, his images represent an innate desire as they depict the conditions that lie at the heart of identity. Nes photographs adolescent boys and young men, situating them in carefully constructed tableaus that emphasize the codes that identify "masculine identity" but at the same time challenge them.
Part of his ingenuity lies in the connection that Nes draws in his photographs between national identity and personal identity. The politics of his native Israel, and his life growing up in a development town, provide a rich resource for his visual studies on the abstractions of country, honor, and land that are made tangible in his personal interpretations of the military hero. Often his images of soldiers are fused with an innocence and vulnerability, a theme that he also pursues and develops in his images of adolescent boys. In these photographs of youths, which again rely on the images and structures of mythic narratives, Nes situates his subjects within scenes that resonate with potential, perfection, and loss.
11:20:34 AM 
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© Copyright 2004 Shane Hensinger.
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