Keren Anavy

Interview

with Joe Brommel, October 2019

You published a book just a few weeks ago. Tell me about it!

It’s an artist book called The Nature of Things, and it highlights an ongoing collaboration I have with Tal Frank, who is my best friend and an amazing Israeli visual artist and a brilliant sculptor based in Mexico City. We’ve already had five solo exhibitions as a collaboration. One of our milestones was a residency we did last year during May 2018 in the Everglades National Park in Florida. It's called the AIRIE Program — artist in residence in Everglades — and it’s a very special, one-month adventure residency, deep inside the Everglades National Park alongside the rangers.

Working on the book was a long, fascinating process that we started long before the residency and continued while living in the Everglades. Initially, it was composed of two different books that were designed to be in one case. One book was a traditional catalog telling the story of each of our five exhibitions, and the other one was designed as a sketchbook of our Everglades experience. But then we saw that there was a lot in common visually and conceptually, and this sharp division into two books bored us — so it was a natural and fun process to mix between them. In the book, we are mainly focused on the connection between nature and culture through images, associations, and specific sites that can add another layer of social or political issues to the landscape. Aliza Edelman, PhD wrote an exciting foreword text to the book, and she mentions that our relationship and art process emblematizes the tumbleweed.

The materiality of the book was another thing that was very important to us, so we composed the book from three types of paper: mylar, watercolor paper, and photo paper. We wanted to give a sense of our studio practice and art process, the way we work and think — a glimpse of our associations.

The landscape and spirit of the Everglades kind of wraps everything together and gives a sense of this nature, but mostly it's about the difference between artificial objects and things that are supposed to be natural. I'm saying “supposed to,” because one of the things that we discovered after a long research in the Everglades was that what we thought was growing in a wild environment was actually very much controlled by all kinds of different interest groups.

But the Everglades, for us, is the starting point for building a metaphor about a global relationship between nature and humans. We look at a situation or image and use it as a platform to speak about broader issues than the thing itself, to open it for other people to identify with.

How does the title of the book tie into what you've just been saying?

In the Everglades, we were fascinated by this very wide natural area with tons of alligators, animals, plants, and, of course, water. But that is surrounded with houses that are decorated with mass-produced sculptures sold at garden stores — the contradiction between this natural wild area and these super artificial decorations right in front of the houses struck us!

Most of the sculptures are sea creatures — mermaids, dolphins, all kinds of fish — because the water is a significant issue in this area, so we decided to sculpt our own mermaid. We chose the mermaid image because she is a female figure as we are, and she has context to a tragic story. These mass-produced sculptures were our means of engaging the distinctions between the natural and artificial, real and manufactured.

Then, we went on a long day trips in the reserve, taking pictures of “our mermaid” in very specific locations in the park that had a connection to the theme of control. For example, we took a photo of her in the pine trees area when they deliberately burn it in order to control the ecosystem in the swamp. We were in shock because we come from a desert country, and deliberately setting fires is something that rarely happened. But in the Everglades it’s different while the rangers try to control nature — flora and fauna. We were really amazed.

Another location was, of course, in the Everglades swamp itself, together with the alligators — which was a kind of dangerous thing to do. [Laughs.] I invited my friend Lisa, to be our assistant — she is Canadian and currently based in East Florida — and use kayaks in wild aquatic areas, so she helped us install the mermaid inside the water.

Another significant place that I mostly like was the meeting point of the Gulf of Mexico with the swamp. This is one of the very rare locations where saltwater mixes with freshwater. It's a very specific area, that also symbolizes the conflict over which group controls the water. Each group has different interests. The rangers are concerned mainly about the animals, the farmers about the fields, the fishermen want to fish more, and then the owners of the houses around [the water].

So “the nature of things” is about relationships between humans, and between humans and nature, and the fact that, no matter how much you try to control the nature, it has its own life. The word “thing” is important, because in most of our exhibitions we explore all kinds of objects — trying to change them and bring them into a certain point where we’re pushing the boundaries of the material.

You also had an exhibition at Wave Hill a year ago: Garden of Living Images. Can you talk about how you thought about the nature of objects in that exhibition?

My starting point for this project was actually the space. Although it acts like a small botanical garden, Wave Hill is considered a public garden because it’s a historical house on the Hudson River. It's a small, stunning bubble inside the Bronx. My project was in the sunroom, and the sunroom is also like an architectural bubble itself inside the garden.

I decided to create an artificial garden and use the light as a material. The light is like a medium in this exhibition. I covered all the windows with a colorful vinyl, and every hour of the day the exhibition looked totally different, and continuously changed as the light shone through the colored windows.

All 13 paintings were inspired by flowers that were growing in the garden during the time of the exhibition. I painted them with ink and colored pencils on mylar. This is a totally different process of painting. I try to control the ink, which is a very meditative material. This is what Chinese calligraphy tries to achieve: to control the material together with the body’s gestures. After the ink dries, I then use the colored pencils almost like oil paints. It’s very precise, and there are tons of layers.

I painted on semi-transparent mylar because I wanted the paintings to be hung in the middle of the space and act as pillars — it was important for me that the paintings became an architectural element in the space. You can, as a viewer, go around and see them from both sides. Mylar is also a very artificial, industrial material, and it has a contradiction with the nature that the exhibition was about and the location of the garden.

So the paintings were hung from the ceiling and dipped into a pond with water and ink. I did it because I discovered when I was working in the studio that, with time, the ink started to grow on top of the mylar from the bottom, creating another layer on the painting. The materials have a life of their own. They have their own nature.

After the exhibition ended, I brought the dipped paintings to my studio and observed the outcome of this process that appeared at the bottom of the painting. Sometimes I continued to paint on top of the new layer of the ink, and sometimes it was such an amazing new abstract painting that I didn’t want to ruin it.

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Can you talk about why you choose to use colored pencils in a way that gestures towards oil painting? In doing my research, I had thought that these pieces were primarily made with oil paint.

It's about building the painting layer over layer. I create very delicate colors and then I blend between them in a very soft way, layer over layer, until it becomes something that looks like another type of color. It’s also suited for mylar because I can plan which areas will stay clear as if they were windows, and the paintings actually build from these fragments of colors.

How do the studies I’m seeing here on the table fit in, then? [Pictured above.]

Usually I work on a couple of things at the time, and they all kind of connect together at the end. In this case, the small paintings gave me information about how I want to do the colors, how much time to give it to dry, how many layers I need. But I'm also very much motivated from spaces. I really love to build spaces or environments from the paintings, to create a world instead of describing it.

Can you tell me more about the pieces you've been working on here?

This is really the start of something new. Here, I’m continuing to build pillars in the space, but I’m also starting to go back to rice paper, which I used to work with several years ago. What I'm trying to do is to create some kind of print from the rice paper on top of the mylar. It looks like a painting, but it's actually the leftovers of the rice paper. I’m also using this orange vinyl. It's the same type of orange that you have on traffic cones, so it's from a totally different world from nature.

I’m trying to build these kind of waterways, since I would like my next project to be an installation that recreates gardens inspired from Persian carpets. When I did the research about the gardens [for the exhibition at Wave Hill], I was also researching Persian carpets, because they depicted amazing botanical images of gardens. Throughout history, both eastern and western gardens have been a political tool by leaders, symbolizing power and strength over nature.

Coming from a desert country, water is something that is very significant in my work — the meaning of the water and how water makes borders between countries is reflected in the exhibition I had with Tal in Mexico City in 2018. It was about aqueducts and, instead of leading water from place to place, we put pyrite stones inside — which is a stone that looks like diamond. So it was an exhibition about water, but the main image was of stones. I call it a “dry exhibition.” This was my starting point for my next project inspired by water gardens in Persian tapestry, and here in Wassaic I started the first paintings related to this project.

And this is just the beginning of that process?

It’s really the beginning, yes. I’m trying to figure out the materials. But being here really gave me a good starting point for the process, because of the large studio space that I can really get messy, and also the amazing natural area that very much inspires me.

Are these pieces on the wall also part of that series?

They’re from another project about the moon that I'm also currently doing, inspired by a smaller installation I did last year called A Moon in My Garden, that was part of a group show in Israel about the image of the moon in contemporary art.

In this current project, I use a photo of a succulent plant in Wave Hill with a fascinating round shape. It’s also an air plant, it doesn't have hold in the ground — which of course takes us to all these meanings about immigration, etc. So I’m mixing these two images together: the moon and the round air plant. I see the moon as a metaphor for something that you aspire to and will not reach. The images I like to use are usually a metaphor for something else. A rose is never a rose.

Maybe this is pushing things a little bit too far, but how do you think of that aspiration in terms of painting and representation? How do you think of that distance in your work between that aspiration and what ends up coming through?

Yes, this is a question that I’ve heard before, because sometimes you see an image in the exhibition that, if you don't read the text, you don't understand the references behind. But this is the situation in general for contemporary art. The viewer needs to make an effort.

I mean, I hope that as an artist, I can make it interesting enough that the viewer will ask questions and have the patience to dig in and discover from where these images are coming. One of the things that I really try to achieve in my installation is to create this situation where you have something beautiful, but at the same time has a sense of distress. Temptation together with an uncomfortable feeling. It's also about the meaning of beauty, and the way we capture an image.

For example, in Wave Hill, it was beautiful and you felt like you were in a kaleidoscope of lights and colors, basically just from the paintings. But at the same time, you felt that it's taking over you, because the space wasn’t so big and the ponds were quite deep. It's this feeling of something overwhelming together with some kind of uncomfortable feeling. This is the border that interests me to find in my art.

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Interview Two

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Keren Anavy

About the Artist

Keren Anavy (b. Israel) is a New York based visual artist, art educator, and a magazine art writer. Anavy has exhibited widely in solo and two person exhibitions including solo exhibitions at The Janco-Dada Museum, Ein Hod, Haifa Museum of Art, both in Israel and at the Sunroom Project-Space, Wave Hill, Bronx, New York. Recently she showed her new interdisciplinary piece made in collaboration with Valerie Green/Dance Entropy at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York, Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, New York City and at the Queens Museum, New York. Among her two person exhibitions were SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018, New York, Autonomous University of Hidalgo State, Pachuca, Mexico and The Gallery of the Cultural Institute Mexico-Israel, Mexico City. Group exhibitions include The Pratt Institute New York, Flux Factory, New York, The Korean Cultural Center, New York and NARS Foundation Gallery, New York, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel and The 2nd International Biennale of Painting and Sculpture, Split, Croatia.

Anavy has been collaborating for the past eight years with visual artist Tal Frank, based in Mexico City. The duo has so far exhibited five exhibitions together and recently they are working on a new venture of an international residency program and exhibition space: Radio28, located at the historic center of Mexico City.

kerenanavy.com

Featured in:

2019 Summer Residency

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