Six Guest Artists at the Kupferman House

Six artists feature their work at the exhibition hall of the Kupferman Collection House in Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot. The last show staged in this hall—which for two and a half years since Kupferman’s passing, has served for presentation of diverse facets of his art—was dedicated to artists who accompanied the outset of this self-taught artist’s career. In the current exhibition we invited artists whose work reveals an affinity—whether explicit, implicit, or latent—to the work of the artist who, while considered a leading artist, never produced disciples; an artist whose influence on his surroundings is identified mainly via conceptual and ethical categories.

None of the six participating artists regards himself as Kupferman’s “follower,” but all of them contemplate, each for his/her own reasons, a type of “debt” they owe him—a debt of emotional yearning, love, wonder, appreciation, admiration; a debt essentially stemming from the recognition that Kupferman’s work indeed stimulates, spurs, even demands contemplation of the essence of painting, the motivations and processes underlying its creation, and the struggles occurring within it between hidden forces—between deliberations and certainties—towards the realization of the “next painting,” as Kupferman used to say.

The participating artists—Larry Abramson, Yael Yaari, Michal Na’aman, Ilana Salama Ortar, Inga Fonar Cocos, and Alex Kremer—belong to the generation, perhaps more than a generation, that emerged after Kupferman. Some of them knew him in person—Abramson guided him through the screen-printing technique; others, “discovered” him in the course of their work. None of them exhibits a painterly language which is committed to that of Kupferman. It is not accidental, however, that among the paintings on view there is one by Abramson entitled Kupferman’s Dream, stemming from critical thought, or a Tribute to Kupferman, which Kremer painted on the first anniversary of Kupferman’s death. In the specific context of the exhibition at the Kupferman Collection House, each painting in it may be regarded as a metaphorical association with Kupferman’s world.

Yona Fischer, January 2007