Keren Shalev
Not alone in the valley of stones - Drawings and Objects
11 Nov – 17 Dec., 2022
3 Dec., 4 p.m. Artist Talk with Nuria Jetter (Art historian)
This exhibition shows a selection of works from different years between 2014 and 2022. Drawings and small objects. All the works deal with the construction of a delicate, fragile structure in which all elements manage to gather and capture a glimpse, a sensation of an inner landscape that can scatter back into nothing at the next moment.
While drawing or sculpting, I think about the materials I interact with and my experience of them: their qualities, tendencies, dynamics, structures, and what I feel working with them. I reflect on my actions, gestures, and perception of them. Through this practice, specific, personal mental landscapes develop in me. Imaginary places I repeatedly return to: organic, expressive, dry, or maybe a wet mixture of rusted iron, concrete, and soil. A place of ruins and wild greenery.
Rocks in reserved positions. Rough and sentimental. Isolation. Disassociated fragments. Aimless and eclectic. Stillness and a sense of self-presence. That place is cold and remote and at the same time, exposed and vulnerable.
Keren Shalev is working mainly with drawing, sculptures, and installation. In her works, she explores structures that evoke personal mental images through their formalistic qualities.
Keren obtained 2009 her B.A. in Fine Arts at the University of Haifa (IL), in 2010 completed a Teaching Diploma at the Kibbutzim College of Education (IL), and in 2014 she studied Museumskunde (DE) in the HTW Berlin.
Keren Shalev has a permanent sculpture at Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin; an outdoor sculpture in Schlosspark Stammheim Cologne and has been exhibited among other places at Radial System V; Berlin, the Jewish Museum Berlin, Starke Stiftung, Berlin; Tête, Berlin; Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin; Helmut, Leipzig, and Alte Feuerwache Dresden.
