Video: Without a face: paintings by Gideon Rabin
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
They say the eyes are the mirror of the soul. Only they alone can betray carefully disguised emotions, can tell about intimate secrets … But is it only the gaze that has the gift of speaking without words? What about the rest of the body? The answer to this question can be found in the work of Gideon Rubin: the heroes of all his paintings are without faces, but their feelings and moods are understandable to everyone.
At the beginning of his career, Gideon Rabin painted ordinary portraits, diligently drawing all the details of the image. Until the date known to the whole world came - September 11, 2001. On that day, by coincidence, the artist was in New York and upon returning home he began to paint completely different pictures: these were images of children's toys found near the site of the tragedy. The author created drawings of shabby old dolls and wooden soldiers with subtle facial features. Time passed, the tragedy was forgotten, and Gideon again returned to the image of people. However, these were already completely different pictures: at first, facial features were indicated only by lines, then they disappeared altogether.
The artist believes that in the heroes of each of his paintings, any viewer can recognize their relatives, friends, acquaintances. If his characters had their own faces, this would be impossible. Gideon invites the viewer to construct a story for themselves, using clues such as people's postures, their clothes, the background behind them - but not their facial expressions. And, I must say, this is not so difficult to do. Although we don't see eyes, smiles or wrinkles, body language tells us just as eloquently about the mood of the characters. By the way, the author finds models for his paintings in old photo albums of the beginning of the last century; at the same time, the artist prefers not to know anything about the fate of the people he paints.
Gideon Rabin was born in Tel Aviv in 1973. In 2002, he received a master's degree from the London Slade School of Fine Art. His work has been featured in galleries in New York, Paris, San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Geneva and other cities around the world.
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